I'm reading a very interesting book, written by an American guy. He is well educated and has some background in English grammar. So, I guess he knows (or pretends very well) what he is doing.
Consistently he is using plural forms of words which usually you can see written the same when used as singular and when used as plural; example: Food becomes foods, fish becomes fishes and people turns into peoples.
How common is it?
But this is not all. In the next paragraph I see a vague use of the grammatical number.
It would be nice to know what you think:
"Perhaps the commonest motive for genocide arises when a militarily stronger people attemp to
occupy the land of a weaker people, who resist."
If he is talking about people as a singular noun ("a stronger people") why isn't he also using attemps (i.e., "he attemps") instead of attemp (i.e., "they attemp")?
Thanks for the advice and have a nice day.
( ;
Consistently he is using plural forms of words which usually you can see written the same when used as singular and when used as plural; example: Food becomes foods, fish becomes fishes and people turns into peoples.
How common is it?
But this is not all. In the next paragraph I see a vague use of the grammatical number.
It would be nice to know what you think:
"Perhaps the commonest motive for genocide arises when a militarily stronger people attemp to
occupy the land of a weaker people, who resist."
If he is talking about people as a singular noun ("a stronger people") why isn't he also using attemps (i.e., "he attemps") instead of attemp (i.e., "they attemp")?
Thanks for the advice and have a nice day.
( ;
foods = different types of food
fishes = different species of fish
peoples = different nations (for example, the British people, the French people etc)
a stronger people = a stronger nation
fishes = different species of fish
peoples = different nations (for example, the British people, the French people etc)
a stronger people = a stronger nation
Comments
Although here the article "a" relates to the militarily ...
No, the article (a) is not optional because the meaning of "people" in that sentence is "nation". Without the article the meaning is different, and I'd interpret "militarily stronger people" as "militarily stronger men and women".
The article "a" relates to the head noun "people" not the modifiers "militarily, stronger".
[Y]
Can we also say: The people (nation) is ... ?