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Scout
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Aug 20, 2010 07:48PM
I'd say that swarm and constellation are collective nouns that take singular verbs. I'm not familiar with count and non-count nouns, but I'm assuming that "non-count" and "collective" nouns are the same. But maybe not. I'm so confused (and not just about this).
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Joanne wrote: "Hi, I love this group! I love the grammar discussions, etc. But enough of the lovefest, I have a question for the grammar guru(s).What is the correct punctuation and usage of a compound possessiv..."
It depends on whether the nouns are acting separately or together.
For example:
"It is your fault and Abby's," would indicate that "you" and Abby were acting together.
"It is your fault and it is Abby's fault," would indicate that "you" and Abby were acting separately.
"Sebastien's and Gabrielle's new cars are red."
This indicates that both Sebastien and Gabrielle have new red cars. (Only he does. LOL)
"Sebastien and Ganrielle's new cars are red."
This indicates that Sebastien and Gabrielle own new red cars together.
"Sebastien's and Bobby's restaurants are doing well."
Both Sebastien and Bobby have one or more restaurants that are doing well.
"Sebastien and Bobby's restaurants are doing well."
This indicates that Sebastien and Bobby own more than one restaurant together and that it's doing well.
I've learnt about count and non-count nouns. 'Swarm' and 'constellation' are count nouns, because you can count them - one swarm, two swarms, three swarms, one constellation, two constellations, etc.They are also collective nouns, but that is something different and separate from count and non-count nouns. I think, logically, all collective nouns are count nouns, because they take the form of 'a ___ of ___'. If you can use the article 'a' in front of a noun, then it's a count noun.
Non-count nouns are words that don't have a plural, and you therefore can't put 'a' in front of them. An example is 'music' - you can't say 'a music', or 'two musics', etc.
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Not that I'm disparaging the Count and his Non-Count buddies. I'm just saying....
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I think it's just a way of categorising, and useful to apply when children have language disabilities and use the nouns inappropriately - you can teach them how to categorise nouns. And useful for people learning English as an additional language, because it won't be obvious to them, so the categories are a useful way of learning.
That's a great explanation, capriwim. Count vs. non-count makes a lot more sense now. One certainly can't count "musics." And you're right about these slightly arcane-seeming categories being a help for non-native speakers. I've found it to be very true myself in studying foreign languages.
You're welcome. I guess it is a newer way of teaching grammar, because it wasn't taught when I was at school either - well, grammar wasn't taught at all when I was at school! I read about it in David Crystal's Rediscover Grammar. It's an interesting book (I should add it to my bookshelf here and do a review). He says that grammar is pulling language to pieces to see how it works, and it's a good basis for learning about other languages.
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Debbie wrote: "Who thinks up these rules anyway? Don't they have a life?"Grammarians. They are changing the entire German language and simplifying it, modernizing it.
That is what Noah Webster originally intended to do with American English - to simplify it and modernise it, by changing the spellings so that everything was completely phonetic. But it didn't work out, and he ended up just changing a couple of spellings, so the American spelling is only a little bit different from UK spelling. It would have been interesting if he'd succeeded though - and interesting to see whether and how it would have influenced UK English.
German is so ungodly complicated, though. Much more complicated than English. It really needs simplifying. English is one of the more simple of the Germanic languages, in my opinion, though I had no problem learning German.
I always thought German was more logical than English - but then I only studied German for a couple of years, so didn't get very advanced at it. But in terms of spelling and grammar, it seemed more consistent than English. But maybe you mean complicated in terms of the word order - for instance, having to wait till the very end of the sentence to hear the verb? Do you have a link for this simplification plan for German? I googled but couldn't find anything. I'd be interested to read about it.
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capriwim wrote: "I always thought German was more logical than English - but then I only studied German for a couple of years, so didn't get very advanced at it. But in terms of spelling and grammar, it seemed more..."I didn't think putting the verb at the end of the sentence was very logical, but I did get used to it once I started speaking German on a daily basis and almost no English or French. I also didn't find it very logical that in German you have to say, "We will meet us at the train station," for example. I mean if two people decide to meet, they are naturally going to meet each other. German words can get terribly long, too, like "Niederlassungsbewilligung," but that's another thing I just got used to. As far as I know, only Finnish has longer word combinations.
I'm sorry, but I don't have a link. It was something I read about when I lived in Switzerland. I don't even know if there's anything online or if the project is still ongoing since I don't live in Europe any longer.
Yes, I was meaning logical in terms of consistency and regularity, rather than where one puts the word. So it's easy to learn the patterns - but the patterns themselves are unusual and don't always follow the simplest natural order of language. And I didn't do enough German to come across such long words as the one you quoted!Like Debbie, I was thinking that attempts to simplify language tend not to be successful - but then, I've only know about simplification plans that were about spelling consistency. I've never heard of this particular kind of plan, although I'm not sure how it would be possible to change word order of an established language, or how the change would start happening in usage. It would be ever so interesting to observe though.
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Exactly.
Every now and again, the Dutch fiddle with their spelling system to make it more uniform. They've had some success with this, but largely because they had a pretty phonetic system to begin with, I think. There was a big overhaul in the late '40s or early '50s that removed a lot of silent letters and established a consistent rule for the use of double vowels. Both of those changes were very readily adopted and are still in use today.
Then there was another change in the '70s that decreed all words with a hard "c" should henceforth be spelled with a "k." That one went nowhere and is now pretty much forgotten. It really didn't serve much purpose anyway.
Americans have had a bit of success with the changes they've instigated too - obviously not the huge changes that Webster originally wanted, but just small changes and new rules intended to make language more logical. We Brits tend to have the attitude that language isn't logical and never will be, because it's a living thing, constantly changing around the varied needs of its users. But I guess if a culture has a need for logic and creating new rules, then that in itself can be one of the things they incorporate into their language.
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Aside from appreciating the content, which is generally quite good, I think I subscribe to the "Economist" because the British spellings seem totally cool to me--"programme" for program; "manoeuvre" for maneuver; "civilisation" for civilization--all vaguely foreign but completely comprehensible.
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True in general. But I thought "Goldfinger" (Bond film no. 3) was way better than "Dr. No" (Bond film no. 1). So there's always the exception that proves the rule.
Perhaps a consistent spelling was wanted, with regard to 'judgement/judgment'. We use 'judgment' in legal documents, and 'judgement' elsewhere. I think consistency is preferred by Americans, as they use 'practice' for both the verb and the noun, whereas we use 'practise' for the verb and 'practice' for the noun, and other similar examples.I always thought the British spellings used 's' instead of 'z', but recently discovered that traditionally we used 'z', and the OED uses the 'z'. I'm not sure where the 's' came in!
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capriwim, maybe the settlers who went to America in the 1600's took the 'z' tradition with them, and then it evolved in the homeland to an 's' after they went....
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And Debs, there's really no excuse for all those extra nonsense letters in such words as "programme" and "manoeuvre." They look like letter car wrecks.
Thank you so much for all the help! :) I think I understand it a bit now. Since they're collective nouns-swarm and constellation, you can still count them, (one swarm, two swarms...) so they're count nouns. I just thought that some collective nouns- sack of rice, bottle of water, etc., are not count nouns if they're taken as just water or rice. But if you group them, then they're count nouns because you count them- one bottle, two bottles...etc. It's just that when you think of the number of bees in a swarm or the number of stars in a constellation, that's a lot. But still, you can count them. But is this same reasoning applicable to hair, sand, sugar? Because it is still possible to count those- like one strand of hair, two strands of hair... Oops, I'm talking about a different example this time. It's just that these kind of categories sometimes just make things confusing. :/
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You can't say, "Give me some more bee" (count), but you can say, "Give me some more beer" (mass). Some nouns are both (chicken, bee). You have to use a quantifier to count a mass noun ("a mess of grub," "a pile of dung," "a gram of strychnine").
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This might be common knowledge already but is the address 'mayor' for men only? Or can a woman be mayor? Thanks! :)
In current times, actually. :) So we can address a lady mayor by just saying 'mayor'? Or should it be 'mayoress'?
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Okay. Thank you so much for the help Gabi and Debbie. :)
While I well recognize that the rules of grammar have been (and still are) based on agreement by those invovled in setting standards, there is often a lapse between "accepted grammatical standards" and those demanded by literary magazines and the young MFA's who are often first reader's. Keeping that in mind is there a kindly soul out there who could give a brief exposition on when to use the dash ,the ellipsis and the semicolon? Thanks.
The way we learnt semicolons at school (our one grammar lesson was on colons and semicolons!) was that it functions the same way as a full stop (period), but it's for when you want something less final than a full stop. So if you've got two sentences which are linked, you can separate them with a semicolon rather than a full stop. For example:I like cats. I have a pet cat called Tibs.
could also be:
I like cats; I have a pet cat called Tibs.
The semicolon shows that the two clauses are separate and independent, but it is less abrupt than the full stop, and can be used because both clauses are about the same topic.
Because it functions as a full stop, you are not supposed to use conjunctions after a semicolon, because the semicolon is instead of a conjuction - so you can't have: 'I like cats; and I have a pet cat called Tibs.' If you want to use 'and', you should use a comma instead of a semicolon.
As for the dash and ellipsis, I'm a bit hesitant to say for those, because I have not learnt formal rules - I just use as I observe, and also I am not sure if the rules are different in America from how they are in England. I think in America two dashes are used--like this--without spaces either side, but I use - as I will demonstrate here - just one dash with a space either side, because I observe this to be British usage. I use dashes to stick a clause inside a clause, as I just did. I use dashes quite liberally in informal writing, as a way of showing when my mind jumps from one thing to another in a more abrupt way than a comma would show, but in formal writing I try to keep them to the usage I just described above.
Ellipses in formal writing can be used when you are quoting something and missing out some words that are not essential for the meaning you wish to convey. The ellipses are in place of the missing words, but I'm not sure what the American rules are regarding spaces before and after ellipses. I would put a space either side of an ellipsis. So, if I quote the first sentence of this paragraph and miss some parts out, it would be 'Ellipses ... can be used when you are ... missing out some words.' This usage is not something I have been taught, but what I observed when studying English literature; this is what the literary critics did, and so I did it in my essays too. (I just did a semicolon to demonstrate it in usage.)
Hope that helps a little. I imagine Americans might say different things, because Americans have slightly different grammar and punctuation rules from ours.
Keep the lectures coming; I am learning a lot. Is the semicolon correct in my sentence?
Seriously grammar was my worst subject. I am never to old to learn. Even my husband has better grammar than me and his first language is not English. LOL
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A dash is a pointer, often giving emphasis to the word or words following or in between. It can also be used to show a break, as in when someone cuts off your speech.
The ellipsis can show missing words from a quote or a simple dropping off.... Use four dots if it's at the end of the sentence (three for the ellipsis and one for the period).
I use dashes a lot. Of course, I use parentheses a lot, too, and these are frowned upon by grammarians. Thank Odin I'm not a grammarian.
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As for the dash. I did in in Word, and pasted it in here.
Thanks to all for your informatioin regarding the dash et.al.I've copied it down and tucked it in a safe(and handy)place.I do enjoy the feeling of professionalism that comes with proper usage, but at times I do think of e.e.cummings. Best.
Yep, in the UK, the spaces either side of the dash make it distinct from a hyphen. I thought in the US the length made it distinct, so no spaces either side - at least that is what I've observed in usage - but I guess everyone does it differently, and the two countries use each other's styles, and mix and match a bit!
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That's what the Chicago Manual of Style says. And in my experience, it's what most copy editors want to see when you submit a text for publication. But in common usage, the em-dash seems just as often to be used with spaces on either side, at least as far as I can see. Maybe it's a rule in flux. Anyway, out of habit--and for the sake of consistency--I usually indicate the em-dash with a double dash and no spaces.
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