Timeline for Plural subject - singular object
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Mar 2, 2014 at 15:30 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Do people ever really pay that much attention to lyrics? When one of the Queen members was asked in an interview to explain the words to Bohemian Rhapsody, he replied with something along the lines of 'Are you serious?' My wife listens to Italian opera sometimes. I never know what they're singing, whether the Italian grammar police should be informed, whether there are glaring ambiguities ... but I like most of it. | |
| Mar 2, 2014 at 14:52 | comment | added | bongbang | @Edwin From the context, the songwriter likely meant to say, "We are divided," so we are in agreement that the original sentence is not ideal. And yet most people don't even seem to notice the problem in this popular song. It's curious. Are we being to pedantic? | |
| Mar 2, 2014 at 8:48 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Barmar: Exactly. And though the usual idiom is '[He] marches to the beat of a different drum' and idioms tend to be fairly fixed, the verb here may be inflected for tense and even switched within narrow limits. 'You and I march to the beat of a different drum' means we're a minority of two. 'You and I march to the beat of different drums' (with which I see no problem) means we're divided in our beliefs / practices. As you say. | |
| Mar 2, 2014 at 8:47 | answer | added | Barrie England | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 2, 2014 at 7:13 | comment | added | Barmar | The original "different drum" line could mean that you and I travel to the beat of the same drum, but it's different from everyone else. A plural object is needed to disambiguate this, e.g. You and I travel to the beats of different drums. | |
| Mar 2, 2014 at 7:03 | answer | added | rogermue | timeline score: 0 | |
| Mar 2, 2014 at 6:41 | comment | added | bongbang | @F.E. Found nothing on "joint coordination" and one thread relating to "distributive coordination," but it's about articles. My specific questions are whether this is a problem and if it is, how to fix it. | |
| Mar 2, 2014 at 6:28 | comment | added | F.E. | Perhaps look into the topic of "joint coordination" versus "distributive coordination". -- Now, do you have a specific question that you want us to help you with? | |
| Mar 2, 2014 at 6:20 | history | asked | bongbang | CC BY-SA 3.0 |