Its great!

Did you spot the mistake in the title?

It should have been It's great!

If you didn't, perhaps it's not surprising. The two little words its and it's are often confused.

If you try to say those two words out, you'll realise they sound exactly the same. And that's the reason why, in writing, mistakes such as the following are common:

SemiAccurate - 4 November 2012

So what's the remedy? The first step to remember that it's is the contraction of it is or it has, whereas its is the possessive of it:

1) It's a beautiful day.
2) The dog is wagging its tail.
3) The company has sacked one of its employees.
4) He says that it's okay to buy the car.
5) It's been raining all day.

And then when in doubt, write out the full form:

1a) It is a beautiful day.
4a) He says that it is okay to buy the car.
5a) It has been raining all day.

Hanged or hung?

Is hung the past participle of hang?

In a sense, yes, but that's only half correct.

In English, most verbs have only one past tense form regardless of their senses. For example, the past tense of run is ran and that's the only past tense form. This fact is extended wrongly to hang so that we get the following misconception:

Base form	Past tense	Past Participle
hang	hanged	hung

Consequently, we frequently see mistakes such as the following:

(1) *She hanged the clothes out to dry.
(2) *The man was said to have hung himself.
(3) *He hanged out with some friends.
(4) *I panicked when my computer hanged.

But the word hang behaves differently from other verbs. Depending on the meaning, the verb has two past tense forms instead of the usual one.

If hang is used to refer to kill by hanging, the past tense and past participle forms are both hanged.

For all other senses, hung is the past tense and past participle of hang. Thus, the correct representation of hang is as follows:

Base form	Meaning	Past tense	Past participle
hang	to kill by hanging	hanged	hanged
hang	all other senses of hang	hung	hung

The erroneous sentences above are corrected as follows:

(1a) She hung the clothes out to dry.
(2a) The man was said to have hanged himself.
(3a) He hung out with some friends.
(4a) I panicked when my computer hung.

Wrong use of "that"

Can we use that every time we use which?

We've discussed this in the post That vs which and the answer is No.

In the screengrab below from Slashdot, the writer used that in a non-restrictive relative clause. The correct relative pronoun is which.

Slashdot - 26 October 2012

Than me or than I?

Do we say He is taller me or He is taller than I?

The difference between the two is that me is an object pronoun and I is a subject pronoun.

While the objective than me may sound more natural to most ears, in formal situations, we use the subjective than I.

The strongest argument for than I comes from ellipsis or grammatical omission. In He is taller than I, the missing verb am can be recovered through ellipsis:

(1) He is taller than I am.
(2) *He is taller than me am.

As pointed out by Quirk et al. (255), in strict ellipsis, when we insert the missing words the sentence should remain grammatical. This requirement is met in sentence (1) but not sentence (2), which is ungrammatical with the insertion of am.

Two headline errors

Two errors in AsiaOne's headlines caught my attention. Both relate to subject-verb agreement and appear one after another:

AsiaOne - 10 September 2012

The verb drop should have been drops, since the head noun Number refers to a specific number, such as 12,500, which is singular.

The second error is the verb continues. The head noun Efforts is plural and takes the plural continue.

Incidentally, the online ChannelNewsAsia also ran the story on the falling number of new citizens, but with the correct singular verb drops:

ChannelNewsAsia - 10 September 2012

Look forward to

Why is the bare form of the verb hear unacceptable in the sentence below?

(1) *I look forward to hear from you.

This student was confused by the grammar rule that requires the infinitive after the word to, such as in the following sentences:

(2) They decided to stay for another day.
(3) We hope to make the trip next month.

The to in sentences (2) and (3) is used before a verb to show that it is the infinitive. It is not a preposition.

The to in look forward to, on the other hand, is a preposition. This makes look forward to a phrasal verb.

As with most phrasal verbs, what follows the preposition is a gerund, not the infinitive:

(4) I look forward to hearing from you.
(5) He was accused of stealing her money.
(6) They insist on giving us a lift.

Comprise

There are two things to note on the use of the verb comprise. First, it should be used in the sense of the whole comprises the parts, not the other way round.

(1) The family comprises six people.
(2) ?Six people comprise the family.

(The ? indicates oddity.)

The family (the whole) comes first, followed by comprises, and then six people (the parts).

The second concerns the use of comprise with of. It seems to be quite common, even among competent users of English:

AsiaOne - 9 August 2012

I would flag it as a mistake and use comprised without of:

(3) It comprised two members from other divisions and Miss Chang was roped in because the services they were going to hire were for her department.

(Just spotted another mistake in the original sentence. It should have been were and not was: "...because the services they were going to hire WERE for her department.") .

Plural noun after "one of"

AsiaOne - 9 August 2012

Since the expression one of entails one of many, the correct form is the plural operators.

The word not is missing from the second highlighted phrase. The phrase should have read "has also not been able to make" or "has also been unable to make".

Everyday is not every day

When do we use every and day as one word everyday, and as two words every day?

The two are not interchangeable.

The single-word everyday is an adjective meaning ordinary, usual, or happening daily. It is usually used before a noun, as the following examples illustrate:

(1) The manual is written in simple everyday language.
(2) Long traffic jams are an everyday occurrence on this road.

A common mistake is to use everyday sentence-initially or sentence-finally, turning it into an adverb that it is not:

(3) *He jogs everyday.
(4) *Everyday, she waters the plants

In both (3) and (4), the correct adverbial is the two-word every day:

(4) He jogs every day.
(5) Every day, she waters the plants.

Because every day means each day, one simple test is to substitute each day for every day. If the resultant sentence sounds right, use every and day as two words.

None is or none are?

Is none followed by is or are?

The answer depends on whether none refers to a count or mass noun. With the latter, none always takes a singular verb:

(1) None of the information is leaked.

When none refers to countable nouns, disagreement arises. Some grammarians prefer the singular verb, some argue for the plural verb while others contend that both are acceptable.

Always singular	None of the oranges is sweet.
Always plural	None of the oranges are sweet.
Either one	None of the oranges is sweet. None of the oranges are sweet.

Quirk et al. (214) notes that "With none, the plural verb is more frequently used than the singular, because of notional concord, even without the effect of the proximity principle.":

None (of the books) are being placed on the shelves today.

Does "more frequently used" mean the plural interpretation is "more grammatical"? Well, it's really debatable. In the absence of a definitive answer, the choice of one over the other boils down to individual style and preference.

Call me a purist, but I'm with the camp that favours the singular interpretation, equating none with not one.

Lie and lay

Is it lie or lay, lying or laying, lay or laid, or lain?

Those pairs often cause confusion. People sometimes use lay when they meant laid, or lying when it should be laying. For concreteness, here are some examples to illustrate:

(1) He laid on the sofa all morning.
(2) Laying on the table, the cat soon fell asleep.
(3) After a while, we lie down and rest.
(4) That hen has just lain an egg.

Can you spot the ones that are wrong?

As a student, I had this little chart that I referred to whenever I was in doubt. It isn't as neat as the one below, but it had served me well.

Base form	Meaning	Past tense	Present participle	Past participle
Lie	To recline	lay	lying	lain
Lie	To tell an untruth	lied	lying	lied
lay	To put or place	laid	laying	laid
lay	To produce eggs	laid	laying	laid

There are a number of things to note from the table. Firstly, the conjugated form lain is used only as the past participle of the verb to lie (to recline). This is a useful fact to remember, to help narrow the choices in troublesome cases.

Secondly, both the present participles of lie are the same form lying, but their past tense and past participle forms differ. Specifically, lay is orthographically different from lied, and lain from lied.

Lastly, and this is arguably the one causing the most confusion, the past tense of to lie (to recline) - lay - is spelt the same way as the present tense of to lay.

Let's go through each of the four sentences above.

(1) He laid on the sofa all morning.

Looking at the table, laid is the past tense and the past participle of lay for both to put or place, and to produce eggs, neither of which is suitable. The correct word is lay, the past tense of to lie (to recline).

Correction: He lay on the sofa all morning.

(2) Laying on the table, the cat soon fell asleep.

Laying is wrong because the intended meaning is to be on a horizontal position. The correct word is lying, the present participle of to lie.

Correction: Lying on the table, the cat soon fell asleep.

(3) After a while, we lie down and rest.

Lie is correct because the intended meaning is to recline and rest.

(4) The hen has just lain an egg. If we remember lain as the only past participle of the verb to lie (to recline), we can rule this as wrong. The correct past participle is laid.

Correction: The hen has just laid an egg.

Welcome or welcomed?

The past participle welcomed is sometimes wrongly used as an adjective, such as in the sentences below:

(1) *You're welcomed to join us tomorrow.
(2) *She didn't feel welcomed at the party.

In both sentences, the correct word is the adjective welcome:

(3) You're welcome to join us tomorrow.
(4) She didn't feel welcome at the party.

The word welcomed should only be used as a verb:

(5) They welcomed the visitors warmly.
(6) The guests were welcomed at the gate by the children.

Details...were

AsisaOne -17  June 2012

There are two mistakes in that sentence alone, both relating to subject-verb agreement. The two instances of was should have been were, since the head noun details is plural and the conjoined noun phrase "he and the entire NKF board" is also plural.

It seems there's a greater tendency for agreement errors of this kind in online news. Here's another one from ChannelNewAsia:

ChannelNewsAsia - 9 July 2012

The correct verb is continues, as the noun penalty is singular.

And a rare one from BBC:

BBC - 9 July 2012

The head noun is results, so the correct auxiliary verb is have.

Because or because of?

Both because and because of can be used as adverbials of reason. For example:

(1) She cried because she was in pain.
(2) She cried because of pain.

Consequently, a common error is to use because of in the same way as because:

(3) *He missed school because of he was ill.

Sentence (3) is unacceptable because "he was ill" is a clause, but because of is a preposition and should be followed by a noun phrase:

(4) He missed school because of illness.
(5) The flight was delighted because of a storm.

Notice that both illness and a storm are noun phrases.

The word because, on the other hand, is a conjunction. It connects two independent clauses:

(6) He missed school because he was ill
(7) The flight was delayed because there was a storm.

In (6) for example, "He missed school" is a clause (the main clause) and "he was ill" is another clause. The conjunction because joins these two clauses.

If we try to replace because of in (5) with because, the result is also ungrammaticality:

(8) *The flight was delayed because a storm.

A few or few?

We have noticed that a number of our students used few when they meant a few. For example:

(1) ?She has few close friends, and they should be able to help her.

(The question mark ? indicates oddity.)

The word few means very few or none at all. For example:

(2) Even though she has spent more than a year in Tokyo, she knows few words of Japanese.
(3) He is happy because there were few complaints today.

A few, on the other hand, means a small number but not a lot. Yes, that little a makes a difference:

(3) She knows a few words of Japanese, and that proved a great help.
(4) He is unhappy because there were a few complaints today.

Do you see the difference now?

A subtle difference no doubt, but it's what makes sentence (1) semantically odd.

The clause "they should be able to help her" indicates a desirable consequence of having some close friends, and we use a few rather than few to emphasize the bigger number:

(4) She has a few close friends, and they should be able to help her.

Marked wrongly?

A reader thought that the student's answer to the Synthesis question below was acceptable, and asked for our opinion.

Primary 6 English Language Paper 2

The only difference between the student's answer in blue and the correction in green is the use of should concentrate in the former and the use of should have concentrated in the latter.

Which is correct?

The past tense modal should does not need changing when reporting the speech, so the student's answer is correct.

If a modal auxiliary in the direct speech is already in the past tense form, then the same form remains in the indirect speech (Quirk et al. 301):

"You shouldn't smoke in the bedroom," he told them.
~ He told them that they shouldn't smoke in the bedroom. 

The answer given for correction seems to have been the result of an overgeneralisation of the backshift rule that applies to verbs and present tense modals. The following pair illustrates this tense backshift:

(1) John said, "I jogged yesterday."
(2) John said that he had jogged the previous day.

The past tense verb jogged is backshifted to the past perfect had jogged.

However, past tense modals such as should and could in direct speech do not undergo tense backshift and remain the same in indirect speech.

Complain is a verb

The word complain is a verb. The noun is complaint, as used correctly in the next sentence:

ChannelNewsAsia - 16 June 2012

In the story below the auxiliary verb have does not agree in grammatical number with the singular noun cost. The correct auxiliary verb is has:

ChannelNewsAsia - 16 June 2012

Well-known or well known?

A student asked whether the two words well and known are always hyphenated when they appear next to each other.

He was probably thinking about a sentence such as (1) below:

(1) The well-known author visited our school.

No, they are not always hyphenated.

When the Adverb + Participle pair precedes a noun as in (1), we hyphenate the two words to make them into a single adjective modifying the noun.

When the Adverb + Participle sequence follows a noun, we do not need to hyphenate:

(2) The author is well known.

However, with adverbs ending in -ly, no hyphenation is needed whether the Adverb + Participle sequence precedes or follows the noun:

(3) He is a highly paid employee.
(4) That employee is highly paid.

A number of vs the number of

Why is a number of plural, but the number of singular?

We get asked this question frequently by our students.

The confusion arises because, overtly, there seems to be little difference between the two except for the indefinite article in one and the definite article in the other.

Yet, small though the difference is, the two differ in subject-verb agreement. The expression a number of takes a plural verb, whereas the number of takes a singular verb:

(1) A number of students have raised this question.
(2) The number of students has increased over the years.

Why?

Well, a number of means several:

(3) Several students have raised this question

 On the other hand, the number of refers to a specific number of something:

(4) The number of participants (at over 12,000) is high.
(5) The number of stray cats has grown in our neighbourhood. (It was 20 last year, but it is now 35.)

Between needs and

The crime story below contains a few mistakes.

AsiaOne - 4 June 2012

The preposition between is used with and, not to: Between May 17 and 21.

The verb convicted is followed by of, not for: convicted of the offence.

In the next highlighted text in purple, the two clauses joined by or are unequal i.e. "shall be punished with a fine not exceeding $2,000" is a verb phrase and "to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years" is a prepositional phrase. One possible rephrase is: A person convicted of the offence faces a fine not exceeding $2,000 or a jail term not exceeding three years.

The phrase exceeding to 3 years seems wrong with to: exceeding three years.

The last bit in green is problematic. I would rephrase it as: shall be liable to caning, subject to Criminal Procedure Code 2010. The phrasal verb subjected to is often used in the passive: The victim was subjected to torture both mentally and physically.

Microsoft grammar checker

In my previous post, I hinted at the inaccuracy of Microsoft Word's grammar program. I wrote that after complaining so much about wordiness, it failed to detect the genuine subject-verb agreement error below:

(1) The quality of these voices matter.

As we pointed out, the correct verb is matters.

It was a relatively simple sentence, yet the mistake went undetected.

Though I have never used any grammar checker for my writings, except perhaps to check for spelling, my interest was nevertheless piqued.  How accurate or reliable is the grammar program? I wondered, and decided to test it out.

Microsoft Word 2010 Spelling & Grammar: English (United Kingdom)

A total of 12 error cases were used in the test. The last case, sentence (12), was deliberately chosen and positioned to verify that the grammar checker had not stopped working after sentence (4).

For anyone not familiar with Microsoft Word's grammar checker, the green squiggly line indicates a possible grammar mistake. The corrections in red were added by me after the check was completed, using a separate graphical software so as not to confuse the grammar checker. 

Though it was only a limited test with contrived sentences, the result has nonetheless revealed the vast inadequacy of the grammar program. Many of the straightforward, non-tricky error cases passed the check without a single complaint. For being such a nag over perfectly fine structures such as passive and cleft constructions, it cannot even reliably handle rudimentary mistakes.

Quality matters

AsiaOne - 24 May 2012

The verb matter should be matters, since the head noun quality is singular.

In the original Straits Times report, the verb used by Mr Lee was the singular counts.

Curious about whether Microsoft Word's Spelling and Grammar checker would find any fault with the sentence, I copied and pasted it into Microsoft Word 2007.

In the Suggestions, the grammar checker merely reports "that while PM Lee fully understands the desire for alternate voices in parliament, it is the quality of these voices that matter" as "Wordiness (consider revising)".

Not very helpful in what I was hoping it would do, so I shortened the sentence to "It is the quality of these voices that matter."

Same unhelpful suggestion as above about the sentence being wordy, so I shortened it even further to "The quality of these voices that matter".

The (ungrammatical) sentence passed the grammar check, with or without the relative pronoun that.

Verbs of senses (Part 2)

In Part 1, we answered the question why past tense verbs cannot follow sense words such as hear. For example:

(1) We heard her crying. (not *cried)

That answer is inadequate because it fails to account for a sentence like (2):

(2) We heard John escaped.

In (2) we have the sense verb heard just like in (1), so we might expect the past tense escaped to be unacceptable. Yet escaped is acceptable in (2) after the sense verb heard.

Why, you may wonder.

Well, the answer lies in the clause after the sense verb. In sentence (2), this clause is John escaped and in (1), it is her crying. The former is a finite clause and the latter is a non-finite clause.

A finite clause contains a subject and a verb phrase that carries tense:

(3) He lives here.
(4) She jogged yesterday.

In (3) for example, the verb phrase lives here contains the present tense verb lives, so the clause (which is also the entire sentence) is finite.

We thus say John escaped is finite because it contains a subject John and a finite verb escaped. We can test this in a number of ways. For instance, we can replace John with a subject pronoun he but not with an object pronoun him:

(5) We heard he escaped.
(6) *We heard him escaped.

We can usually insert the conjunction that before a finite clause:

(7) We heard that John escaped.

A non-finite clause, on the other hand, usually does not have an overt subject and carries no tense markers:

(8) She loves to sing.
(9) They made him run.
(10) He dreads getting up so early.

In (8) for example, the clause to sing does not have an overt subject and is not marked for tense, so it is non-finite.

If a clause is non-finite, we can neither use a subject pronoun nor insert the conjunction that:

(11) *We heard she crying.
(12) *We heard that her crying.

The analysis above applies to causative verbs as well:

(13) They made him wait.

The clause him wait is non-finite, because we can't replace him with he and neither can we insert the conjunction that:

(14) *They made he wait.
(15) *They made that him wait.

Using the notion of finiteness, we can easily explain the tensed swam in (16) and the non-tensed swim in (17):

(16) We watched as they swam.
(17) We watched them swim.

Verbs of senses (Part 1)

Many students have trouble choosing the correct form of the verb in the following sentence:

(1) We heard her scream/*screamed for help.

Because of the past tense verb heard, students who are not careful will choose the past tense screamed instead of the bare infinitive scream (or the -ing form screaming).

A similar mistake is often made with the verb make:

(2) They made me wait/*waited.

Again, the wrong verb form waited is chosen because of its connectedness with the past tense made.

So why is the past tense form of the verb unacceptable after verbs such as heard or made? Well, the reason is the verb is preceded by a special class of verbs. Words such as heard fall under verbs of senses while words such as made are called causative verbs.

After verbs of senses, only the bare infinitive or the -ing form of the verb is acceptable:

Subject + Sense verb + Object +  Infinitive / Present participle

(3) We watched them play/playing.
(4) I saw him climb/climbing over the fence.

With causative verbs such as make and help, only the bare infinitive is allowed:

Subject + Causative verb + Object +  Infinitive

(5) She made me laugh.
(6) I helped her complete the puzzle.

In Part 2, we'll look at the structure of the clause after the sense verb or causative verb and explain why only the bare infinitive or the -ing form of the verb is permitted.

An organisational

ChannelNewsAsia - 10 May 2012

Two mistakes in the business news story above. The first relates to subject-verb agreement:

NOL adds that details [of the restructuring plan] are being finalised...

The second is the use of the article a before organisational, a word beginning with a vowel sound. The correct article is an.

I vs me

A reader wanted to know why the subjective I in the sentence below is unacceptable:

(1) *The prize will be shared between you and I.

It's an interesting question, and one that touches on a topic we have planned to write. To answer her question adequately, we need to first know the difference between subject and object pronouns.

Subject pronouns are pronouns that take the place of a subject in a sentence. They are typically in front of the verb:

(2) I am hungry.
(3) She runs fast.

In English, the subject pronouns are I, you, he, she, it, they, and we.

Object pronouns are pronouns that take the place of an object in a sentence. Objects are typically behind the verb:

(4) The car nearly hit him.
(5) They saw me.

English uses the object pronouns me, you, him, her, it, them and us.

Next, we look at the word between in sentence (1). Between is a preposition, and that's an important clue. When a pronoun comes after a preposition, it must be in the objective case:

(6) He was angry with me. (not *with I)
(7) The boss thinks highly of her (not *of she)
(8) They were looking for us (not *for we)

It doesn't matter if other intervening elements come between the preposition and the last pronoun. For example:

(9) He was angry with Peter, you and me.
(10) The boss thinks highly of John, you and her.
(11) They were looking for Mary, Jane and us.

So, the correct pronoun in sentence (1) above is me:

(12) The prize will be shared between you and me.

What about you and I? Well, since I is a subject pronoun (as well as you, though the latter is not obvious because its form doesn't change), we use you and I for subjects:

(13) You and I are expected to attend the party. (not *You and me)

Contents of the fire was?

AsiaOne - May 6, 2012

The verb was is wrong, since the head noun contents is plural and requires the plural verb were.

A similar mistake was made in the story below:

AsiaOne - 3 May 2012

The correct verb is were:

Images [of what seems to be a smiling ghost] were spotted on a bus in Singapore.

The prepositional phrase of what seems to be a smiling female ghost is enclosed in square brackets to make the head noun images obvious to see.

A pair of trousers

Phrases that combine a pair of and binary nouns such as trousers and binoculars are one of those problematic cases of subject-verb agreement.

One reason is that both pair and trousers refer to things comprising two parts, making them potentially troublesome words. To compound the problem, words such as trousers and scissors end with the plural suffix "s", with the consequence that the proximity rule may be wrongly applied.

Not surprisingly, you sometimes see a plural verb used:

?A pair of glasses were broken.

The correct verb in the above is the singular was, since it agrees in number with the singular noun (or partitive) pair.

The rules, as prescribed by most grammar books, are fairly straightforward:

Rule 1: If the noun pair is present, use a singular verb:

(1) The pair of trousers belongs to Jane.
(2) A pair of scissors was found.

Rule 2: If more than a pair is referred to, use a plural verb:

(3) Several pairs of shoes are missing.
(4) Two pairs of spectacles were found at the pool.

Rule 3: If pair is absent, use a plural verb:

(5) These scissors are blunt.
(6)  Those shoes don't belong to him.

An university?

Do you say a university or an university?

The rules on the use the indefinite articles a and an before singular countable nouns are easy to follow: use a before a word beginning with a consonant and use an before a word beginning with the vowel a, e, i, o or u.

These rules give us the following:

an apple, a bicycle, a cat, a doctor
an egg, a fish, a girl, a hamster
an ice-cream, a jar, a key, a lion, a motorcycle, a nail
an orange, a purse, a queen, a racket, a snail, a storm, a torch
an umbrella, a villa, a watermelon, a xylophone, a yawn, a zebra 

But perhaps the rules are intended to be broad and easy to learn, because they only tell us half the story. As you can see, applying them faithfully produces the wrong phrases:

Correct	Incorrect
an umbrella	*an university
a home	*a hour

What's going on here? Why are two of the examples wrong when they follow the indefinite article rules above?

Well, the answer lies in how the words university and hour are pronounced. In other words, the sound is more important than the spelling. To know how a word is pronounced, we can look up a dictionary. Here is an example:

hamster | ˈhæmstə |

(Online tools such as Text to Phonetics provide free transcription.)

The symbols between the two vertical bars give the pronunciation of hamster i.e. the phonetic transcription of hamster.

For this discussion, we need only to concern ourselves with the initial symbol or sound of the phonetic transcription. For hamster, this symbol is the letter h, a consonant sound.

Now let's look at the words umbrella vs university, and home vs hour:

umbrella vs university
umbrella | ʌmˈbrelə |
university | ˌjuːnɪˈvɜːsɪti |

home vs hour
home | həʊm |
hour | ˈaʊə |

The first phonetic symbol for umbrella is ʌ, a vowel sound, so we say an umbrella. For university, the initial sound is j, a consonant sound, so we say a university.

In the next pair, the beginning sound in home is the consonant h so we say a home. The word hour begins with the vowel (a diphthong¹) aʊ, so we say an hour.

1. A diphthong is one indivisible vowel sound that consists of two parts. The first part is the main strong component (the nucleus); the second part is short and weak (the glide).

Years is or years are?

We can count years, can't we? But why is my answer wrong? This student had selected are in a practice question that goes like this:

(1) Five years (is, are) a long time to spend in jail.

His confusion is understandable. After all, the word year is a countable noun like dog and chair and behaves the same way in determiner-noun agreement:

(2) one dog/year, two dogs/years
(3) this dog/year, these dogs/years

And grammar rules on subject-verb agreement say use a singular verb for a singular subject and a plural verb for a plural subject:

(4) One dog is/was missing.
(5) Two dogs are/were missing.

So when he sees the plural years, he wrongly applies the subject-verb agreement rule to produce an awkward sentence below:

(6) ?Five years are a long time to spend in jail.

But the word years is a different animal, though it shares certain agreement and inflectional properties with other count nouns.

Whether the time word takes a singular or plural verb depends on its meaning in the particular context rather than on the presence of any grammatical marker. In other words, agreement according to the principle of notional concord.

When used to refer to a period of time, it takes a singular verb:

(7) Five years is a long time to spend in jail.
(8) Ten years was the time he took to build the robot.

When referring to more than one entity, it takes a plural verb just like other plural count nouns:

(9) Two years are added to the training programme.
(10) The next three years are going to pass quickly.

Besides years, other plural unit words involving money and distance also obey notional concord:

Money
(11) Forty dollars is a good price. (one entity)
(12) Two dollars are on her study table. (more than one entity, like two pens)

Distance
(13) Ten kilometres is not that long. (one entity)
(14) Five miles are to be added to this road. (more than one entity)

Team is or team are?

Should it be "The team is" or "The team are"?

Well, both are acceptable and the choice depends on how the group word team is viewed.

Like family, jury, choir and committee, the word team is a collective noun. Unlike a common countable noun such as boy or table, which always requires a singular verb in the present tense, a collective noun can be used with either a singular or plural verb:

(1) Our team hopes to win the championship.
(2) Our team hope to win the championship.

In sentence (1), the word team is conceived as one entity and takes the singular verb hopes. In sentence (2), the same word is viewed as a group of people and so takes a plural verb with no inflection.

All collective nouns that name groups of members can usually be treated the same way. "Usually" because sometimes only the singular sense of the collective noun is possible. Sentence (3) below, where the group is being considered as a unit, illustrates this singular use (Quirk et al. 216):

(3) The audience was enormous.

Applying the plural sense of audience to sentence (3) would lead to an awkward sentence:

(4) ?The audience were enormous.

Whether we treat collective nouns as singular or plural, it is important to be consistent:

5) The committee has submitted its plan.
6) The committee have submitted their plan.

If we intend to use committee in the singular sense, then our choice of the singular verb has should match the singular possessive pronoun its.

However, if we choose the plural meaning of committee accompanied by the plural have, we should correspondingly use the plural their.

Inconsistency in the treatment of collective nouns can result in grammatically odd sentences:

(7) ?The committee has submitted their plan.
(8) ?The committee have submitted its plan.

(The ? indicates the sentence is grammatically odd.)

If we are unsure about the number of the collective noun, or to avoid agreement issues, we can add the word members to collective nouns such as committee or use the word players instead of team:

(9) The committee members have submitted their plan.
(10)  Our players hope to win the tournament.

Small comma, big difference

One of my students from my tuition class told me she thought something was wrong with the example below, but couldn't quite figure out why:

Conquer Synthesis & Transformation, 2009

She was right. It's unfortunate that the example on the use of whose at the beginning of the synthesis exercise had a mistake.

The relative clause whose project is due next Monday should have been set off by commas.

Without the commas, the relative clause is restrictive. Restrictive clauses define or restrict the noun they modify. However, Steven is a proper name and proper names have a specific reference and do not need further defining.

The sentence should have been written as follows:

(1) Steven, whose project is due next Monday, has fallen ill.

With the commas, the relative clause becomes non-restrictive and merely adds non-defining information to the proper noun Steven.

The restrictive version would be correct if we wanted to refer to a certain Steven. To do this, we use the definite article the:

(2) The Steven whose project is due next Monday has fallen ill.

Sentence (2) refers to a particular Steven, and the restrictive clause serves to pick out that specific individual.

There is or there are?

Does the sentence below sound odd to you?

(1) There are a cat and a dog in the field.

If it does, you are probably not alone.

A friend had asked me some time back whether it should be (2) instead:

(2) There is a cat and a dog in the field.

The short answer is no, and the long answer will take us to two differing views.

Sentences beginning with "There" are termed expletive sentences. The word "There" is called a dummy subject whose purpose is to introduce the sentence. It does not refer to anything nor does it encode any grammatical information.

Traditional grammars argue for sentence (1) because the plural are agrees in number with the plural a cat and a dog, similar to the kind of agreement obeyed in the following pairs:

(4a) Some water is in the pond.
(4b) There is some water in the pond.

(5a) Many trees are planted here.
(5b) There are many trees planted here.

(4a) and (5a) are declarative sentences while (4b) and (5b) respectively are the expletive "There" counterparts.

Notice that it's easier to see the number agreement between Some water and is and that between Many trees and are in the declarative structure than in the expletive structure, since Some water and Many trees occupy the prototypical subject position in (4a) and (5a).

The trick, therefore, is to turn sentence (1) into a declarative sentence to make this agreement obvious to see:

(6) A cat and a dog are in the field.

We now have a straightforward conjoined plural noun phrase A cat and a dog in the subject position agreeing with the plural be verb are, and this same plural be verb should be used in the "There" structure as we saw in (4b) and (5b), where the is and are respectively mirror their more prototypical counterparts.

This preference for the plural are in sentence (1) is the position held by traditional grammarians and echoed by others such as Grammar Girl.
 
In actual usage, however, there is a preference by most native speakers to choose the verb that agrees in number with the noun or noun phrase nearest to it (Marianne Celce­-Murcia et al, 1998). This preference can be explained by the Proximity Principle.

According to this principle, subject-verb agreement should occur with the subject noun nearest to the verb. Sentences (7) and (8) below illustrate this rule:

(7) Either John or his friends are attending the party.
(8) Either the students or their teacher was present.

In (7), the plural subject noun friends is nearer to verb to be than John, so the plural are is chosen. Similarly in (8), the singular subject noun teacher is nearer to the verb to be, so the singular was is preferred.

With expletive constructions, the proximity rule will give rise to the following two sentences:

(9) There is a cat and two dogs.
(10) There are two dogs and a cat.

So should we apply the proximity principle to "There" constructions? Well, no. Particularly in formal contexts, the grammatically acceptable version is the one based on the traditional prescription.

News..has

News of radiation leaks from one of Japan's nuclear plants have sparked off concerns among many netizens in Singapore.

There's a mistake in that sentence (read full story here). Can you spot it?

The mistake arises from subject-verb concord. This rule relates to number agreement between the subject and the verb that follows it:

(1) My cat sleeps all night
(2) My cats sleep all night.

In (1), the singular subject My cat agrees in number with the singular verb sleeps. In (2), the plural subject My cats agrees in number with the plural verb sleep.

It's trivial when the subject is a simple noun phrase. In (1) above, my cat is a noun phrase made up of the determiner my and the head noun cat.

It gets a bit tricky when you have a complex noun phrase as the subject:

(3) The park frequented by many residents is temporarily closed.

In sentence (3), the noun phrase is "The park frequented by many residents". The head noun park is modified by the clause "frequented by many residents".

Because of the intervening clause between the head noun and the verb, it's easy to forget what the real subject of the sentence is and mistake the noun residents for the subject, thus ending up with the grammatically wrong sentence below:

(4) *The park frequented by many residents are temporarily closed.

Sentence (4) is ungrammatical because the noun park is singular but the verb are is plural.

Let's go back to the sentence from the news story. The correct version is sentence (5) below:

(5) News of radiation leaks from one of Japan's nuclear plants has sparked off concerns among many netizens in Singapore.

The noun news is always singular and so takes the singular verb has.

As an exercise on subject-verb concord, try spot the mistake in each screengrab below:

ChannelNewsAsia - 18 November 2010

examenglish.com

AsiaOne - 28 October 2010

The reason why

Grammarians are divided over the use of why such as in the sentence below:

(1) The reason why he left was unknown.

Specifically, the debate centres on whether why is redundant after the phrase the reason.

Redundancy is the use of unnecessary words or phrases that express something already said in the utterance or sentence. For example, the phrase in colour is redundant in My car is red in colour because red is a colour.

Some grammarians consider the use of why in the expression the reason why redundant and condemn its use. They argue that because both reason and why amount to the same meaning, the word why is unnecessary after the reason. Hence, they advocate the why-less version below:

(2) The reason he left was unknown.

Others argue that the word reason is a noun and does not mean why, a conjunction, and so there is no redundancy. This view is shared by Bryan A. Garner, who pointed out in Garner's Modern American Usage that the phrase the reason why is no more redundant than the time when or the place where.

So, which view do you subscribe to?

I favour the latter view that there is no redundancy in the reason why. Although why can be removed from sentence (1) without any loss in meaning, it does not necessarily follow that its inclusion makes the longer sentence incorrect. In fact, I would even argue that the more verbose the reason why is better than the reason by looking at where since both are conjunctions:

(3) The place where he visited was a tourist spot.
(4) The place he visited was a tourist spot.

Both sentences (3) and (4) are acceptable in English and convey roughly the same meaning. Neither is more correct than the other.

However, consider the next pair:

(5) The restaurant where we ate was horrible.
(6) The restaurant we ate was horrible.

The verbose where version makes the intended meaning of the restaurant as a place where the eating happened unambiguous. The minimalist version, on the other hand, can be misleading. Someone might think we ate the restaurant!

But the expression the reason why must be distinguished from the reason is because. The latter is an outright redundancy, since the word because means for the reason that.

That vs which

Can you use that whenever you use which? If we look at the pair of sentences below, the answer would appear to be yes:

(1) The deer which was shot miraculously survived.
(2) The deer that was shot miraculously survived.

Sentences (1) and (2) show that both which and that can be used without any change in meaning.

However, consider the next pair of sentences below:

(3) The deer, which was shot, miraculously survived.
(4) *The deer, that was shot, miraculously survived.

Sentences (3) and (4) are not that different from the corresponding (1) and (2). However, while both sentences (1) and (2) are acceptable, only sentence (3) is acceptable but not sentence (4), as indicated by the asterisk (*).

Why is that so? What difference do the commas make?

The answer lies in the difference between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. 

A restrictive clause limits or restricts the meaning of the noun by introducing information that is essential for understanding the sentence. It is not set off by commas.

Sentences (1) and (2) above show the use of restrictive relative clauses.

The restrictive relative clause in each limits the meaning of the noun deer so that the reader knows which deer was being referred to.

If we remove the restrictive relative clause in (1) and (2), the resultant sentence would mean completely different from the ones with the restrictive clause.

Specifically, sentence (5) below does not have the same meaning intended by sentences (1) and (2):

(5) The deer miraculously survived.

Which deer miraculously survived? The one that injured itself? The one attacked by a tiger? That piece of information is missing in sentence (5).

A non-restrictive clause adds information that could be useful but is not essential for understanding the sentence. It is set off by commas.

Sentence (3) above shows the use of a non-restrictive relative clause. The pair of commas renders the relative clause which was shot non-restrictive. The non-restrictive relative clause merely adds the information that the deer was shot and leaves open its interpretation in the sentence.

If we remove the non-restrictive relative clause in (3), the meaning of the resultant sentence will not be very different from the one intended by the original sentence, since the information that the deer was shot is peripheral to understanding the sentence.

So, back to the question we posed at the beginning. Sentence (4) is unacceptable because the relative clause is used non-restrictively, in which case only which is permitted. When a relative clause is used restrictively, the relative pronouns which and that are interchangeable. The choice of one over the other is a matter of style, with some writers preferring to use only that for restrictive clauses.

Who or whom?

The use of who and whom often causes confusion, so it's a topic worthy of discussion.

Let's begin by looking at the two sentences below:

(1) The man _____ hit you is a bouncer.
(2) The man _____ you hit is a bouncer.

Which of these requires who and which requires whom?

To answer that question, we need to first introduce two definitions:

who is a relative pronoun functioning as subject
whom is a relative pronoun functioning as object

(In grammar, a subject is typically the doer of the action and an object the recipient of the action. So in The dog bit Alice, The dog is the subject of the sentence and Alice is the object.)

Next, we ask the question: Who did the hitting?

The answer to that question will help us find the subject of the verb hit.

In (1), the man did the hitting. We can see this more clearly by simplifying (1) to (1.1):

(1.1) The man hit you; the man is a bouncer

So the man is the (underlying) subject of hit in sentence (1). Consequently, we use who because who is subjective:

(1.2) The man who hit you is a bouncer.

In (2), you did the hitting. Again, it helps to simplify sentence (2) to (2.1):

(2.1) You hit the man; the man is a bouncer.

Sentence (2.1) shows that the man is the (underlying) object of hit. Consequently, we use whom for (2) because whom is objective:

(2.2) The man whom you hit is a bouncer.

The discussion above notwithstanding, the use of whom is considered rather formal. In spoken or informal English, who is preferred over whom in object position. But when there is a preceding preposition, whom is the only choice:

(3) The girl to whom he spoke is Angela.
(4) With whom did you have dinner?