Although these sentences might well be
uttered in casual speech, or inadvertently written down, most people would
probably regard them as ungrammatical, because they flatly contradict
grammatical concord.
Other, more acceptable, instances of attraction arise with singular
nouns of kind and quantity:
A large number of people have applied for
the job
Those kind/sort/type of parties are very
enjoyable (informal)
The latter illustrates an idiomatic
anomaly: there is lack of number concord between the noun and the determiner
those, as well as with the verb. The awkwardness can be avoided by rephrasing
as Parties of that kind...
7.26
Concord of person
As well as concord of number, there is
concord of person between subject and verb:
I am your friend (1st person singular
concord)
He is ready
(3rd
person singular concord)
He knows you
Following the principle of proximity, the
last noun phrase of a coordinate subject (where the coordinator is or, either..
.or, or neither... nor) determines the person of the verb:
Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else knows
the answer
Either my wife or I am going
Because many people find such sentences
unacceptable, they often prefer to use a modal auxiliary, which is invariable
for person, eg: Either my wife or I will be going.
Other
types of concord
7.27
SUBJECT-COMPLEMENT
CONCORD.
Subjcct-complement concord of number (but not
of person) exists
between S and C in clauses of type SVC;
thus:
The child was an angel but
not *The child was angels
The children were angels but not *The children were an angel
This type of concord arises naturally froin the
denotative equivalent in the intensive relationship. There are, however,
exceptions:
What we need most is books
They turned
traitor (but They became traitors)
Good manners are a rarity these days
There is an equivalent type of concord between
object and object complement in SVOC clauses; eg: He thinks these
girls the best actors.
SUBJECT-OBJECT
CONCORD
Subject-object concord of number, person, and
gender is necessary, as well as subject-complement concord, where the second
element is a reflexive pronoun (4.84 f): ~
He injured himself in the leg
You should give yourself another chance.
The same concord relation holds when the
reflexive pronoun occurs in other functions {eg as prepositional
complement), or when the reflexive genitive his own, etc is used:
She s making a sweater for herself
They re j-uining their own chances
In BrE, collective noun subjects permit plural
concord: The navy congratulated themselves on the victory.
7.29
PRONOUN CONCORD
Personal pronouns in the 3rd person agree with
their antecedents both in number and (with the singular pronouns he, she,and it) in gender:
John hurt his
foot John and Beatrice hurt their
feet
Beatrice hurt her foot The climbers hurt their feet
By contrast, John hurt her foot would
mean that John hurt someone else s foot (the someone else having been
previously mentioned).
7.30
English has no
sex-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun, and so the plural pronoun theyis often used informally, in defiance of number concord, as a substitute for
the indefinite pronouns everyone, everybody, someone, somebody, anyone,
anybody, no one, nobody.
Everyone thinks theyhave the answer
Has anybodybrought their camera?
No one could have
blamed themselves for that
The
plural pronoun is a convenient means of avoiding the dilemma of whether to use
the he or she form. The same dilemma can arise with coordinate
subjects and with some indefinite noun phrase subjects, but here, resort to the
evasive device of the plural pronoun is perhaps not so acceptable:
? Either he or his wife is going to
have to change their attitude
? Not every drug addict can solvetheir problem so easily
The use of they in sentences like [1-3]
is frowned upon in formal English, where the tendency is to use he as
the unmarked form when the sex of the antecedent is not determined, The
formal equivalent of [1] is therefore:
Everyone thinks he has the answer [la]
There is a still more pedantic alternative, the
rather cumbersome device of conjoining both masculine and feminine pronouns:
Every student has to make up his or herown mind
The vocative
A vocative is a nominal element added to a
sentence or clause optionally, denoting the one or more people to whom it is
addressed, and signalling the fact that it is addressed to them:
jOhn I wAnt you (voc S V Od)
It s a lovelydAy, Mrs JOHNSON (S V CB voc)
yOu, my frIend,
will have to work HARDer (S voc V A)
These three sentences sh aw how a vocative may
take an initial, medial, or final position in the sentence; in its optionality
and freedom of position, it is more like an adverbial than any other element of
clause structure.
Intonationally,
the vocative is set off from the rest of the clause, either c instituting a
separate tone-unit or by forming the post-nuclear part a tone unit (AppII.7). The most characteristic intonations are shown : dvc: fall-rise for
an initial vocative; rise for a medial or final vocative.
7.32
In form, a vocative may be
(1) A single name with or without title:John, Mrs Johnson, Dr Smith
(2) The personal pronoun you (markedly
impolite);e.g. Behave yourself, you. Or an indefinite pronoun; eg:
Get me a pen, somebody,
(3) Standard appellatives, usually nouns
without pre- or postrnoiMiea- tion (not even the possessive pronoun):
Family relationships : mother, father,
uncle: or more familiar forms like mom(my) (AmE), mum(my)
(BrE), dad(dy), auntie
Endearments: (my) darling, dear, honey(AmE)love
Titles of respect: sir, madam, My Lord, Your
Excellency,
Your Majesty, ladies and gentlemen markers of
profession or status: doctor; Mr]Madam Chairman; Mr President/ {Mr) Prime
Minister; Father (for priest); Bishop
(4) A nominal clause (very occasionally):Whoever said that, come out here.
(5) Items under (1), (2), or (3) above with the
addition of modifiers or appositive elements of various kinds:
(1) My dear Mrs Johnson; young John
(2) You with the red hair; you over there
(impolite); informal but not impolite: you boys; you (young) fellows; you guys
(AmE)
(3) Old man/fellow (familiar); young man/woman
One obvious
function of a vocative in English is to seek the attention of the person
addressed, and especially to single him out from others who may be within
hearing. A second function, less obvious but certainly no less important, is to
express the attitude of the speaker towards the addressee. Vocatives are
generally used as a positive mark of attitude, to signal either respectful
distance or familiarity (varying from mild friendliness to intimacy).
Negation
7.33
The negation of a simple sentence is
accomplished by inserting not, n t between the operator and the
predication:
The attempt has
succeeded ~The attempt has not succeeded
We may win the
match ~ We may not win the match
He is coming ~
He isn t coming
We have been defeated ~ We have not been
defeated
In these instances, there is an item in the
positive sentences that can serve as operator. When this is not so, the
auxiliary do is introduced and this, like modal auxiliaries, is followed
by the bare infinitive:
She sees me every week ~ She doesn t see me
every week
They understood the problem ~ They did not
understand the problem
Sentences with lexical be behave exactly
as when be is auxiliary: She is a teacher ~ She isn t a
teacher. Lexical have usually has do as operator (though in
BrE it often need not, and informally got is often added):
7.34
Abbreviated
negation
In
circumstances where it is possible to abbreviate the operator by the use of a
contracted form enclitic to the subject (usually only a pronoun), two
colloquial and synonymous forms of negation are possible(3.19-21):
He isn t coming ~
He s not coming
We
aren t ready ~
We re not ready
They haven t caught him ~They ve not caught him
She won t miss us ~ She ll not miss us
He wouldn t
notice anything ~ He d not notice anything
7.35
Non-assertive
forms
There
are numerous items that do not naturally occur outside negative, interrogative,
and conditional clauses; for example:
We haven t seen any soldiers
*We have seen any soldiers