[etni] Fw: re: Tamar's question
- From: "Ask_Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "ETNI" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 06:56:41 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marlene" <marlenegay@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Tamar's question
However, DO the police ever apprehend criminals? The police ARE trying to
find the culprit, but haven't succeeded yet .
Marlene
Batya wrote:
> I've inadvertently deleted the relevant ETNI digest, but I recall that
> Tamar's question concerned the issue of collective nouns; in the example
> she gave, the word "class" is a collective noun -- that is, though it's
> singular in form, it includes more than one person. (Another common
> example is the
> noun 'family'.)
> Tamar's answer to her student was correct -- i.e., we say "Does the class
> go on trips?" rather than "Do..." because a singular noun { we're talking
> about a class, not classes!} must take a singular verb. Moreover, in this
> sentence it is clear that we're referring to the class as a single entity
> and that we are speaking about the action of the majority of the group; it
> doesn't matter whether a few individual members are excluded from the
> question because it's known they never go on trips.
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