Search results for 'tag:Singular nouns tag:Universities' matching tags 'Singular nouns' and 'Universities'

Re: Standard spoken English

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:00:04 GMT

Something to chew on:

THE NOTION OF STANDARD SPOKEN GRAMMAR

The term âstandard grammarâ is most typically associated with written language,
and is usually considered to be characteristic of the recurrent usage of adult,
educated native speakers of a language. Standard grammar ideally reveals no
particular regional bias. Thus âStandard British Englishâ grammar consists of items
and forms that are found in the written usage of adult educated native speakers
from Wales, Scotland and England and those Northern Irish users who consider
themselves part of the British English speech community.

The typical sources of evidence for standard usage are literary texts, quality
journalism, academic and professional writing, etc. Standard grammar is given the
status of the official record of educated usage by being written down in grammar
books and taught in schools and universities.

Spoken transcripts often have frequent occurrences of items and structures
considered incorrect according to the norms of standard written English. However,
many such forms are frequently and routinely used by adult, educated native speakers.

Examples of such structures are split infinitives (e.g. We decided to immediately sell it),
double negation (e.g. He wonât be late I donât think, as compared to I donât think he will
be late), singular nouns after plural measurement expressions (e.g. Heâs about six foot
tall), the use of contracted forms such as gonna (going to), wanna (want to), and so on.

Standard spoken English grammar will therefore be different from standard
written English grammar in many respects if we consider âstandardâ to be a
description of the recurrent spoken usage of adult native speakers. What may be
considered ânon-standardâ in writing may well be âstandardâ in speech.
Speech and writing are not independent. Although some forms of spoken
grammar do not appear in writing (unless in written dialogues), there is
considerable overlap and there is an increasing range of forms appearing in
informal written texts which previously were only considered acceptable in
speech. In 120 the presence of typically spoken grammatical forms contexts as emails and internet chat-room exchanges is discussed.

From: The Cambridge Grammar of English (GCE)

Re: Some questions

Philip — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:05:38 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

Please answer the following questions:

1. Why the word 'police' does not have a determiner in front of it when my dictionary noted that it could be a singular noun?

... identified by police and parents as the day-care center owner... 'the' could be used, but is often omitted.

2. Is the following adjectival construction acceptable?

... 24 members of a University California, Irvine, rowing crew were ...Acts as an adjective modifyin 'a.....crew'.

3. When you have abbrviations like IRS or NBC, don't you (usually??) put the article 'the" in front of the abbreviations but why not here? Sorry for not providing you with extended versions.

... user guide about IRS ... I'm sure this is done in print; in speaking, I would insert 'the'.

Specter, McKay and Iglesias appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," ... This is fine.

Remember that for many things in any language we simply have no logical explanation. (I'm not saying there is no logical explanation for some of this, but I can't come up with one.)

Some questions

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:01:07 GMT

Please answer the following questions:

1. Why the word 'police' does not have a determiner in front of it when my dictionary noted that it could be a singular noun?

... identified by police and parents as the day-care center owner...

2. Is the following adjectival construction acceptable?

... 24 members of a University California, Irvine, rowing crew were ...

3. When you have abbrviations like IRS or NBC, don't you (usually??) put the article 'the" in front of the abbreviations but why not here? Sorry for not providing you with extended versions.

... user guide about IRS ...

Specter, McKay and Iglesias appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," ...

Re: Mass noun "group"

paco2004 — Fri, 13 May 2005 02:26:52 GMT

Hello Hela

"Group" is a group noun (a collective noun, or a noun of multitude).

Similar nouns are;
army, association, audience, board, clan, class, club, commission, committee, community, company, corporation, council, couple, crew, crowd, department, enemy, faculty, family, federation, firm, flock, gang, generation, government, group, herd, institute, jury, majority, media, minority, opposition, party, population, press, public, staff, team, university, police, people, etc.

When you feel the group acts as a single entity, you'd better treat it as a singular noun.
[EX] The committee has reached its decision.
[EX] The audience was enormous.

When you feel each member of the group acts as an individual, you'd better treat it as a plural noun.
[EX] Now the committee have a coffee break.
[EX] The audience have enjoyed the rock concert.

British speakers tend to take collective nouns as plural and American speakers as singular.
[EX] The committee have/has argued over it all day long.
[EX] The audience were/was addressed by the concert master.

paco

Search results for 'tag:Singular nouns tag:Universities' matching tags 'Singular nouns' and 'Universities'

Re: Standard spoken English

Re: Some questions

Some questions

Re: Mass noun &quot;group&quot;

Re: Mass noun "group"