Search results for 'tag:Plurals tag:Determiners' matching tags 'Plurals' and 'Determiners'

Re: Noun number and determiner

Clive — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:50:44 GMT

Hi,
. . . friends, I feel there is more to the explanation of it.
What are noun numbers tI'm no familiar with this expression. To me, it sounds like a way of talking about singular/plural.

and determiners? Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determiner_(class)

Let me assure you that if you say things like 'He's pulling my legs / one of my legs/ a leg', it will sound very odd and quite amusing to nstive speakers.

Best wishes again, Clive

Re: has / have

Yoong Liat — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:40:54 GMT

Grammar Geek

You need some sort of determiner before "meal."

In the U.S., we generlaly use a singular verb for family, but would still use "their" in the plural.

The dining area is where the family has/eats their meals.

It's the same in BrE; either a singular or a plural verb can be used after 'family'.

My family was/were in Orchard Road last Sunday.

Re: has / have

Grammar Geek — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:32:26 GMT

You need some sort of determiner before "meal."

In the U.S., we generlaly use a singular verb for family, but would still use "their" in the plural.

The dining area is where the family has/eats their meals.

Re: Kindly eplain which sentence is right?

CalifJim — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:25:31 GMT

You have no determiner in front of annual contribution(s), so it has to be plural. That makes 2 and 4 wrong.

If you have only one investment plan (the usual arrangement), use 1. If you have more than one, use 3.

Part of Speech identification

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:16:08 GMT

Hello, this is my first post here, I like to know these words
kilometer
centimeter

Are those words noun if they are standing alone ? if it's, what kind of noun it's, proper noun or abstract noun or etc ?

After that, I want to indentify the part of speech of the following setence by using the stanfard parser at http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/index.jsp
if you input,
convert kilometer to centimeter
it gives convert/VB kilometer/NN to/TO centimeter/VB

if you input,
convert 2 kilometers to centimeter
it gives convert/VB 2/CD kilometers/NNS to/TO centimeter/NN

You can refer to the tagset below, my question is, is the first input setence correct ? if it's correct the part of speech given by the program seems to be incorrect because
the centimeter should be noun instead of Verb, or am I wrong ? If you add the "2" as the second input the program gives the correct part of speech tagging,
it it because my first input grammar is incorrect ? Thank you.

Reference

1. CC  Coordinating conjunction  25.TO  to 
2. CD  Cardinal number           26.UH  Interjection 
3. DT  Determiner                27.VB  Verb, base form 
4. EX  Existential there   28.VBD Verb, past tense 
5. FW  Foreign word              29.VBG Verb, gerund/present participle 
6. IN  Preposition/subord.   30.VBN Verb, past participle 
218z     conjunction 
7. JJ  Adjective                 31.VBP Verb, non-3rd ps. sing. present 
8. JJR Adjective, comparative    32.VBZ Verb, 3rd ps. sing. present 
9. JJS Adjective, superlative    33.WDT wh-determiner 
10.LS  List item marker          34.WP  wh-pronoun 
11.MD  Modal                     35.WP  Possessive wh-pronoun 
12.NN  Noun, singular or mass    36.WRB wh-adverb 
13.NNS Noun, plural              37. #  Pound sign 
14.NNP Proper noun, singular     38. $  Dollar sign 
15.NNPS Proper noun, plural      39. .  Sentence-final punctuation 
16.PDT Predeterminer             40. ,  Comma 
17.POS Possessive ending         41. :  Colon, semi-colon 
18.PRP Personal pronoun          42. (  Left bracket character 
19.PP  Possessive pronoun        43. )  Right bracket character 
20.RB  Adverb                    44. "  Straight double quote 
21.RBR Adverb, comparative       45. `  Left open single quote 
22.RBS Adverb, superlative       46. "  Left open double quote 
23.RP  Particle                  47. '  Right close single quote 
24.SYM Symbol  48. "  Right close double quote

Re: How does "the" modify plurals followed by relative clauses?

CalifJim — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:08:30 GMT

A. She talked to the students who failed the test.
(Am I referring to some of the students who failed, or all (the?) students who failed?)
All who failed.

B. She talked to students who failed the test.
(Am I referring to all (the?) students who failed, or have I incorrectly omitted "the"?)
to students who failed the test = to some students who failed the test, where some may be all.
some can include all. She may have talked to three students, and only three failed the test (those three) or maybe five or six failed the test. In either case she talked to students who failed the test.

C. "Students who don't study usually fail."
(Am I referring to all (the?) students who don't study, or have I incorrectly omitted "the"?)
all (the) students who don't study.

D. "The students who don't study usually fail."
(Am I referring to all (the?) students who don't study, or some of the students who failed?)
all (the) students who don't study.

C. and D. are equivalent logically. C is a general (universal) statement about all students; D is a specific statement about all the students the speaker has singled out through previous contextual cues.

PS: Although A has "the" and C doesn't, they both sound natural to me. So does "the" modify the whole "students who blah blah" or just "studnets"?
Strictly speaking, the does not modify anything; it never does. But it acts as the determiner for the whole noun phrase with its relative clause, not just the head noun.

CJ

Re: Plural or singular?

CalifJim — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:19:35 GMT

Y and Z records means Y record and Z record. Singular countable nouns cannot occur without a determiner in English. (the is a determiner.) So you need something that means the Y record and the Z record.

CJ

such

Believer — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:55:47 GMT

Hi,

I think the usual recommendation regarding the usage of the word 'the' is that use 'such' with 'a', 'an' or write in the plural form for the countable nouns and don't use any determiners for the uncountable nouns like this:

such an apple

such apples

such nature

But according to the Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner's Dictionary, you can use such before noun groups to emphasize the extent of something or to emphasize something is remarkable. In this instance, could this apply both to countable nouns and uncountable nouns unlike the examples given above?

Re: Pls check grammar and coherence

nona the brit — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:42:58 GMT

You have problems with determiners, plurals, verb tenses, prepositions and general grammatical structure. I've corrected the first paragraph for you and highlighed problems in the second. In the second paragraph you have started inserting a space before commas, which is incorrect.

The government does not do a good job in helping the poor. According to the governments' data in 2005 , the number of poor families has increased to 80,000 households, doubling from the 1996 figure of 40,000 households. Furthermore, some government legislation is unfair to low income groups .For example, those registered with labour unions have to pay NT$24 per month for national health insurance, (compared with average income groups - you can't say this without clearly stating the comparison. Is it double the amount average income groups pay, for example?). As a result, the gap between the poor and rich in Taiwan has extended widely since 2000.

Recently government has focused on reducing the unemployed rate and also tried finding efficient strategies. By contrast , it seems to be fail because the unemployed rate has gone up significantly , particularly in rural areas. In addition , government opens cheaper working from south-east Asia.Therefoer companies prefer hiring those workers rather than Taiwanese.It is obviosly that government has just shown the policies about umemployed, in fact , government does not execute the policies in Taiwan.

Re: a large number of

Dawnstorm — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 23:35:29 GMT

Inchoateknowledge wrote:
"depending on how I interpret" -- you mean I have the choice to adjust the verb form to the notion the subject suggests to me?
and that it is a matter of taste?

Invitations is the subject, thus, strictly speaking, only plural verb form is okay here. This is what I call grammatical concord as opposed to notional concord.

Sorry, I think I was hasty claiming that. I was making up an ad hoc theory to explain the acceptability of "has" (and didn't even explain it). What I thought was this:

Subject: "a great number of invitations"
Structure "article + modifier + noun1 + of + noun2"
Syntactic concord: usually with noun1: "a cart of apples is...", "a man of secrets is..." etc.
Therefore, syntactically: "a great number of invitations is..."
BUT: "a great number" can be equated with determiners: "many invitations are...", "some invitations are..." etc.
Therefore, after semantic adjustment, concord with "noun2".

The flaw, assertion, or what you call it in my reasoning was "Syntactic concord: usually with noun1". (Really? I don't really have any basis to claim that such a syntactic rule exists. It's an ad-hoc hypothesis, that explains nothing.)

So sorry, again, for any confusion I caused. Just ignore what I said about "interpretations".