Hot answers tagged grammatical-number
6
He actually sings, "I'll be seeing my gran and seeing my mum." In Britain, gran is a name for a grandmother (probably short for granny, which is short for grandma, which is short for grandmother). The plural, then, would be grans, but I don't think you'd hear it often. More likely, British folk would use a different word like grannies or grandmothers to talk ...
4
Switching the example to illustrate:
The suspect, just like his two younger siblings, became a notorious
gangster.
Here, it is more obvious that the complement should be singular like the subject, and that the parenthesis, which gives additional information rather than changing the subject, shouldn't affect concord.
The suspect and his two ...
4
As Wikipedia and the Purdue OWL both note:
Singular possessives always add -’s.
Plural possessives add -’s if they don't already end in s.
Because the plural fish does not end in s, it becomes fish’s, just like the singular form.
Note: In some contexts, the plural of fish is fishes. Because that does end in s, it becomes fishes’.
2
I prefer "zeroes" because "zeros" resembles the Greek singular and seems to invoke the pronunciation ZEH-ross, and I'm not the only one. Oxford explains their pluralization rules including an appearance of zeros, here: Oxford Dictionaries: Plurals of Nouns.
In sum:
Usually add -s (solos, zeros).
If vowel+o, add -s (studios, zoos).
Some words take -oes ...
2
Italian speakers often have a confusion on the different uses of "any" and its different meanings.
Any is usually defined as being an adjective, an adverb, a pronoun, a determiner and until today I was unaware of a further subclass: a numeral
Many words of different parts of speech indicate number or quantity.
Quantifiers do not enumerate, or ...
1
It's not clear to me whether you are talking about a written or oral sentence, but several thoughts:
If it were a single team name, it seems unlikely that there would be the extra the in the middle.
The Jaguars and the Cheetahs teams always win.
The Jaguars team and the Cheetahs team (both) always win.
Both the Jaguars and (the) Cheetahs teams always win.
...
1
Before you can choose whether to use a singular or plural noun with any, you need to know which of the various functions and meanings it has in the context in which you are using it. In each of your affirmative sentences any is equivalent to every.
It can be found in any / every book.
This can be understood by anyone / everyone.
It can be said ...
1
Weathering means
1 wear away or change the appearance or texture of (something) by long exposure to the atmosphere:
[with object and complement]:
his skin was weathered almost black by his long outdoor life
• [no object] (of rock or other material) be worn away or altered ...
1
The first and the last sentence are correct. The middle sentence is not correct.
The reason is this sentence, which is the original one:
There should be an X chromosome and a Y chromosome.
Notice that this is not
*There should be an X chromosomes and a Y chromosomes.
Neither chromosome should be plural.
That's what is meant.
Now the rule of ...
1
The answer is inside your brain. It helps you remember things. Memories are like for example, a container. Memories are things we put in our container, they can be cold memories, good memories, sad memories, etc... Like for example I did something wrong to my friend so I went up to her and said sorry and she just looked at me and said, "Oh well, that was a ...
1
Definition:
adj. Being one of two or more considered individually; every: Each
person cast a vote. My technique improved with each lesson.
pron. Every one of a group considered individually; each one.
adv. For or to each one; apiece: ten cents each.
Reading the above definition, we can deduce that each is used when we want to emphasize the singularity ...
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