Search results for 'tag:Singular verbs tag:Word order' matching tags 'Singular verbs' and 'Word order'

Re: About English plural 's'

Su Cheng Zhong — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 23:58:55 GMT

korin said:
>Over approximately 1500 years, the mammoth set of inflections of the Old English has virtually been discarded leaving only 's' (plural nouns, 3rd person singular verbs, and saxon genitive) in modern English. English has become a rather analytic lg, where most of the syntactic relations within a sentence are expressed by means of word order.
I always confused by the 3rd person singular verbs. If some one like, can you explain the following sentence, for me?
"Jones shake(s) hand(s) with Tom."
The question is that how we calssify the subject and object, singular or plural? I always wonder that the shaking hand(s) is like the meaning of shaking a bar. For shaking hand(s) means that you wave your hand and cause other hand waving. So it should be 'Jones shakes Tom's hand', not 'Jones shakes hands with Tom'. For Jones' hand is initiative and Tom's hand is passive. If you regard both hand were shaken simultaneously, then, who are (is) subject? Are both Jones and Tom are subject? Then we have to say, 'Jones and Tom shake hands.'

Re: About English plural 's'

Su Cheng Zhong — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:56:27 GMT

>I do not claim that the plural ending 's' will definitely disappear. However, looking at the direction the English language is heading, the disappearance would come as no surprise.

>Over approximately 1500 years, the mammoth set of inflections of the Old English has virtually been discarded leaving only 's' (plural nouns, 3rd person singular verbs, and saxon genitive) in modern English. English has become a rather analytic lg, where most of the syntactic relations within a sentence are expressed by means of word order.

I agree with you. In scientific writing material 'kg', 'sec' etc, didn't put on 's'. People seemed like analytic word than synthetic word. They like 'more common' than 'commoner', 'most pleasant' than 'pleasantest' etc.

Re: About English plural 's'

korin — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 14:34:58 GMT

I do not claim that the plural ending 's' will definitely disappear. However, looking at the direction the English language is heading, the disappearance would come as no surprise.

Over approximately 1500 years, the mammoth set of inflections of the Old English has virtually been discarded leaving only 's' (plural nouns, 3rd person singular verbs, and saxon genitive) in modern English. English has become a rather analytic lg, where most of the syntactic relations within a sentence are expressed by means of word order.

In the colloquial English, quite often you can hear the speakers drop the 's' ending. Sentences like the ones below are not uncommon:
He like music
He don't know it
How much is it? -It's 5 pound.
It's 2 metre long.

I am not a native speaker of English, and whenever I hear one of my friends (ENS) saying something like that I ask them why. The most common answer: out of laziness.

Every language reflects the needs of its speakers. Prescriptivists may take pains to control a language. In most cases they are almost sure to fail. It is the speakers of a language that unconsciously influence the language's shape. Over the last 15 hundred years, as far as the inflectional system is concerned, the native speakers of English have displayed a clear tendency to simplify things.

What is going to happen next?