I have friends who are communication specialists in various
corporate companies. Still, I’ve always had difficulties while trying to
understand English Grammar. Those rules which are contradictory to each other,
those exceptions for rules, same word implying different meanings, different
rules within a similar concept such as degrees of comparison, singular &
plural, and most importantly, revising the dictionary with more words (both
noun and verb) every now and then and calling English as an evolving language!!!
Offff!!! So tough for a beginner to avoid confusions.
Let’s consider Rules of subject verb agreement
First confusion,
How many rules are there?
The highlight is, these people have their own set of rules
for Subject verb Agreement, check the links below:
20 Rules:
12 Rules:
18 Rules:
All right, let’s discuss about the first rule which is
common in any website you might see and the rule goes like this
Rule 1: Singular subject takes singular verb and plural subjects take plural verb
The confusing point – Plural subject has ‘S’ at the end (not
all the time!!), but singular verb has ‘S’
Boys, rests, goes, girls, monkeys, eats, temples, builds,
roads, flies, rhymes, sings, songs, plays, balls
These words mentioned above have both singulars and plurals,
subjects and verbs, try to find them.
OK let’s see some examples,
1.
Boy goes to school (subject and verb both are
singular)
2.
Girls go to school (subject and verb both are
plural)
3.
I go to school (subject singular and verb
plural)
4.
You go to school (subject singular and verb
plural)
Though sentences 3 and 4 does not satisfy the rule, for our
amusement, all the four sentences are correct.
But how?
There is an exception for Rule 1, if the subject is a first
or second person the verb takes the opposite form (singular for plural and vice
versa)
Moreover we have this nasty concept of one word replacing
two different words in varying tenses,
Linking
Verbs (Present Tense)
|
Linking
Verbs (Past Tense)
|
Is, am
|
was
|
are
|
were
|
Has, have
|
had
|
Note that both “is” and “am” replaced by “was” similar to “had”
replacing “has” and “have”.
“So do we still have to discuss the remaining rules?” nope,
this is more than enough.
Singulars and Plurals
Let’s talk about singular and plurals.
Do we have rules for this also?
Yes! We do and I am not sure how many and based on what
logic, let’s see some examples and you count the rules yourself!
·
Boy becomes Boys
·
Mango becomes Mangoes
·
Leaf becomes Leaves
·
Life becomes Lives
And the worst part,
·
Child becomes Children
·
Person becomes People
·
Man becomes Men
·
Mouse becomes Mice
Words with Multiple Meanings:
This
part is a cherry on the cake, there are hundreds of words in English, which can
be a noun/pronoun and (or) a verb
·
I May get a car in the month of May
·
Fly flies and Flies fly
·
I want my intimate friends to intimate me about
the work
·
During the Lab session, we subject the subject
to a series of tests
·
The police can lead us, if they get a lead from
the crime scene
·
He was too close when I was about to close the
door
·
I saw a dove and it dove into the bushes
Degrees of Comparison
·
Tall, Taller and Tallest
·
Beautiful, More Beautiful and Most Beautiful
·
Good, Better and Best
·
Many, More and Most
·
Little, Less and Least
Words with same sound
There are words which you can identify only with reference
to the context, if pronounced alone, both words have same sound
·
Two, Too
·
Gene, Jean
·
Die, Dye
·
Lie, Ly
·
Write, Right
·
Ant, Aunt
·
Billed, Build
·
Know, No
·
Knot, Not
These words are called as “Homonyms” in English.
There are much more other concepts, but due to the size factor, I am stopping this here. Add your own thoughts in the comments section.
Finally,
this is me, when other correct my Mistakes
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