Category: Grammar (Page 2 of 2)

Presidents’ Day or President’s Day?

February 10, 2011 / ESL Help! Desk / 0 Comments

Is the name of the holiday President’s Day or Presidents’ Day? Or is it Presidents’ Day?

One of the most misunderstood aspects of proper English grammar is the use of the apostrophe for plural possessives.

Let’s explore this in regards to the holiday that honors America’s Presidents – and that we celebrate each year on the 3rd Monday of February.

First, many people celebrated Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday, February 14, although it was never a Federal holiday.

George Washington’s Birthday, which is officially on February 22nd, became a Federal holiday. However, the Federal holiday “Washington’s Birthday” takes place a little earlier, on the 3rd Monday in February.

Soon a decision was made to combine the birthday celebrations for our Presidents, so an unofficial holiday developed.

Since the holiday is not official, there is no official name for the day. Sometimes it is written as the plural possessive Presidents’ Day and sometimes it is written as a plural noun, Presidents Day. Most of the time, however, it is written as the plural possessive Presidents’ Day – the Day belonging to the Presidents. I personally prefer this latter name.

To create the plural possessive, we do the following:

First, we add ~s to the noun (President –>Presidents). This makes it plural.

Then we add the apostrophe to that: Presidents –> Presidents’

Then we add the noun “Day”.

On the unofficial holiday of Presidents’ Day, we remember the Father of Our Country, George Washington, and our 14th President, Abraham Lincoln, who established the unity of the United State of America, and the right of all men to be free.

Everybody: he or she?

October 24, 2010 / ESL Help! Desk / 2 Comments

An interesting debate took place among English faculty at the college where I used to teach. We faculty were looking at one of the students’ essays in my Easy Writer software and the following sentence created a stir among us:

“There is just one day in a person’s life when he celebrates with a big wedding.”

We faculty looked at this sentence and each one had a different idea about how to edit it.

One faculty member, me, wanted to keep it as is.

Another suggested the following:

“There is just one day in a person’s life when he or she celebrates with a big wedding.”

Another person suggested this:

“There is just one day in a person’s life when they celebrate with a big wedding.“

Somebody asked whether it was a male or female writing this essay; if it was a female, then the sentence should read as follows:

“There is just one day in a person’s life when she celebrates with a big wedding.“

But in my opinion this is incorrect because it implies that all people are female, and that only women get married!

There has been a debate in English circles about what pronoun reference (he? she? they? he or she?) to use with the noun “a person” or the pronoun “everybody“. Some English teachers will become very upset when the general pronoun “he” is used. Now and then you’ll notice a writer has avoided choosing a gender (the male “he” or the female “she“) by choosing the plural pronoun “they“. But we know that the pronoun must agree in “number” with its noun or pronoun antecedent, and that because “a person” is singular and “everybody” is singular, the plural pronoun “they is incorrect.

I’ve seen some students write “he/she”, which is even worse and you will never find this in professional writing.

Call me sexist, call me conservative, call me old-fashioned, but our language has used “he” as a pronoun reference for “a person” and for “everybody” for ages, and frankly what’s more important to me is how people are treated, not what pronoun reference we use in writing. As long as English used “he” as a general reference and people were not confused about it, I don’t see why we should start becoming confused now!

Besides, now we can argue about which gender, male or female, should be listed first: Should you write “he or she” or “she or he”?

So what should you use when writing? I’m recommending that you use the good old “neutral pronoun “he” in an essay – unless you have a professor who really objects.

And what about our Easy Writer software? Well, it will accept “he or she” and it will also accept “he”. It’s very accepting!

You’ve Got Mail: An Example of Bad Grammar

October 5, 2010 / ESL Help! Desk / 15 Comments

Today I opened my AOL mail account and this example of bad grammar went off in my ears like a car backfiring. We hear it so often that people barely understand that it is entirely grammatically incorrect. Many have come to think that it is correct.

What’s wrong with the ubiquitous “You’ve got mail“? This phrase is used in my own AOL account and shared by the blockbuster movie of the same name (which features this email relationship).

Even the most grammatically correct of us say “You’ve got to see this” but this is admittedly BAD GRAMMAR.

Let’s look at this verb by verb, beginning with the verb “(to) have“.

The simple present tense of this verb would be “You have mail. (Come pick it up.)”

The present perfect tense of this verb would be “You’ve gotten mail. (Why haven’t you opened it?)”

Let’s look at the verb “(to) get“.

The simple present tense of this verb would be “You get mail (every day except Sundays).”

The simple past tense would be “You got mail (yesterday).”

The present perfect tense would be “You have gotten mail* (every day for the last 2 months. Why haven’t I?” * or “You’ve gotten mail…”)

So there is no such correct verb form for “You’ve Got Mail” at all! And yet we hear this composite of verb forms everywhere.

A word of advice: Avoid saying it! Instead of “You’ve Got Mail”, say “You Have Mail.” And instead of saying “You’ve got to hear this,” say “You have to hear this.

And if you are going to use it occasionally in conversation, be aware that it is not correct English and be able to use correct grammar when socially necessary. Speaking with bad grammar might mean you don’t get the job you are looking for, and more. And certainly never use it in writing. Unless, of course, you want to write copy for advertisements.

Stay tuned for a future podcast, where we discuss the advertising slogan, “Got Milk?” and why that too is grammatically incorrect.

How to Know if a Noun is Countable or Uncountable

July 29, 2010 / ESL Help! Desk / 2 Comments

The next question, “How do I know if a noun is countable or uncountable?”, is similarly not easy to answer!

We’re speaking about English, remember?

It’s time to take out our dictionaries – hard-bound, soft-bound, or electronic. We will be using an online version, from Longman’s Dictionary of American English.

We’ll begin with an easy noun: the noun, advice. You can click on the hyperlink or you can see below:

This noun has one definition, and right away the dictionary listing says [uncountable].

That was easy. So now we know that this noun has NO plural form and that the verb we use should be in a singular form. We also know to NOT use an article (a and an) before this noun.

So how do we count this noun, then? How do we quantify it? Look at the example “a piece/word of advice“. This would be the standard way of counting items of advice.

Just yesterday a friend offered me some advice that I did not solicit. I said to her, “Did I ask you for advice?” She said “No” and that part of the conversation ended, and the topic was changed. Thus, grammatically, you see there was no article (a or an) used before the noun, which is correct for an uncountable noun.

Be sure, with looking up any word, in particular a noncountable noun, to see if the dictionary gives you any suggestions for how to quantify this noun.

We’ll stop here for today, at this easy place.

But there are many nouns that have both a countable and an uncountable form, such as the noun “change”! What about those? In our next blog post, we will answer the question, “How (Do We Know) If a Noun Has a Countable and an Uncountable Form?”

How to Know the Plural Form of a Noun (If It Has One)

July 25, 2010 / ESL Help! Desk / 1 Comment

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You wanted an easy answer, didn’t you! Sorry, I can’t give it to you! You’re learning English!

Let’s say you are learning a new word. A new noun. The reasonable thing to assume that it is a regular noun, and that it is a countable noun and has a plural form. As a rule, the plural form of a noun is constructed by adding an ~s or ~es to the singular form.

In most cases, that would work. But that’s where you may get into Grammar Trouble-ville.

So let’s do some research. Let’s look up a new word in a dictionary.

I looked up the word “man” in my beloved little Webster’s Dictionary that I’ve had since I was a child. It indicated man. n.; pl. MEN . I next turned to my Longman Dictionary of American English that I’ve just taken off of the shelf for this purpose. Right after the main word “man” was a note indicating its part of speech: “n” (for noun) and then “men”. So we’re good in both dictionaries, right from the beginning. We learn the plural form for the noun man is men.

Now I tried this on an online Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English . Go ahead; click on “man 1 noun”.

Right here it says “man plural men“. That’s it! This is a countable noun that has an irregular plural form.

I next tried the common (singular) noun “person“. My little Webster’s Dictionary didn’t say anything about its plural form (“people”). Might this mean that the plural of person is persons? My Longman Dictionary of American English (very helpful for learners of English) had, after all the definitions, at the very end of the entry, a “USAGE” note: “The usual plural of person is people.” You see, there is a plural form of person: persons, but its meaning is not our standard one: We would not say “I saw many persons in the park.” The form persons tends to be legalistic and mathematical.

I tried Longman’s online dictionary:
This tells us “person [countable]. Now it gives us the first “1” common definition: MALE PERSON [countable}. So now we know we can say “There were many people looking for work.”

Let’s scroll down a little further, to definition #4:

“4 plural persons” And we see this has a different meaning and use, as I wrote above, a more formal use.

So let’s practice and look up the word “woman“: We find woman n women. That tells us the singular is woman, the word is a noun, and the plural is women.

As a rule, the plural form of a noun is constructed by adding an ~s or ~es to the singular form.

How about working this backwards !

Let’s look up “women“. In a hard copy dictionary, we see nothing there! Dictionaries will not list the plural form of a word in its listings. So if this occurs to you, then you will have to figure out what its singular form is. Either put on your thinking cap, or consult a grammar book.

Or look online: and there it is!

Now suppose you look up the word “change” – referring to the coins such as quarters, dimes, nickles and pennies. The next question here is – how do you even know IF a word has a plural form? We have many words in English that do not have a plural form! Nouns such as these are referred to in a number of ways: non-count nouns, non-countable nouns, uncountable nouns. Whatever you call then, you will need to know if the noun even has a plural form.

Stay tuned for our next blog post: How to Know if a Noun is Countable or Noncountable!

A Reader Request for a Lesson on Phrasal Verbs

October 1, 2009 / ESL Help! Desk / 0 Comments

Here’s a letter that we recently received:

Let me say that this poadcast is very important for me since I had some difficulty to understand the use of the present perfect before. I’m so glad!

first of all I’d like to thank all members working to help people improve their lunguage skills. It’s so kind from your part!

What I’d like to find in this site is the use of phrasal verbs that often make me confused to well understand the real meaning of the verb.

Please if you have poadcasts about this I would like to know where I can find them.

Thanks

We don’t have the name or email address of the person who wrote to us, but we thank you for your request, and your support, and will do a lesson on phrasal verbs soon!

If anybody has any phrasal verbs in particular that confuse you, send them our way as part of a comment to this blog post.

Thank you!

*******

“It’s Correct but I Can’t Explain It”

August 20, 2009 / ESL Help! Desk / 2 Comments

What happens when your grammar and sentence structure is correct, but you cannot explain WHY something is correct? First, I say Be glad that it is correct! But of course you are curious and a thinking person and you want to know more and you still want to know why! You want to understand the language.

Here is a question received that shows just such a case:

Grammar can be very confusing. I have a question. I’m very familiar with causative verbs but what about this:

“I saw my mother park the car.” “Saw” is not a causative verb. “Mother” is the D.O. What is “park?” I’m using an infinitive without “to” but I can’t explain it.

Please help.

Gerry Reissman
***

Here is our first response of what turned out to be a lively dialogue:

Gerry,

In the sentence you provided us, the direct object (D.O.) is a noun phrase “my mother park the car”. The sentence would be diagrammed as: Subject: “I”. Verb: “saw”. DO: “my mother park(ed) the car”.

Analyzing the noun phrase, “my mother” is the subject of the noun phrase, “parked” is the verb, and “the car” is the direct object of the noun phrase.

Please explain your thinking that you are questioning the use of the infinitive “to” in this sentence, so I can see where that idea is coming from.

Also, there are no causative verbs in this sentence.

The only two legitimate grammatical possibilities are “I saw my mother park the car” and “I saw my mother parking the car”. Do you see the differences (grammatical and otherwise) between these two sentences?

Brian, are you thinking “Why doesn’t this sentence follow the same structure as…..(for example)…”I want my mother to park the car”?

ESL Help! Desk

—–

Gerry responded:

Thank you very much for your help but maybe I was not thorough with my question.

I recognize the noun clause with “mother” as the subject and “park” as the verb (not “parked”).

So if “park” is the verb of the noun clause, where is the subject-verb agreement?

Why not “I saw my mother parks the car?” We wouldn’t say that.

That’s why I thought “park” was the infinitive form without “to.”

Can you explain the lack of subject-verb agreement?

Thank you.
***

We responded:

Do you know anything about diagramming sentences? Get a paper and pencil!

The key here is the rule of VERBS OF PERCEPTION, such as “see”, “hear”, “smell”, etc.

The sentence that you see derives from an underlying sentence that would be diagrammed as: Subject: “I” Verb: “saw” Direct Object: “my mother parked the car” and that noun phrase derives from Subject: “my mother” Verb: “parked” Direct Object: “the car”. In the underlying sentence, there is no subject-verb agreement because the verb is simple past tense. But in the higher layer, the one we use for communication, the RULE is that we use the BASE FORM of the verb after the VERB OF PERCEPTION, “(to) see” or in this case, the past tense “saw” when the verb of the noun phrase is either simple past or simple present tense.

There is one other option: Let’s say noun phrase of the underlying sentence uses the past continuous tense: “My mother was parking the car”. In such cases, we do away with the helping verb “was” and the end sentence is “I saw my mother parking the car.”

The rule applies even for the present tense. “I see you looking at me!” results when the underlying sentence is “You are looking at me”. Or this one: “I see her park every day” is what we express when the underlying sentence is “She parks every day”.

Why is this so?

I don’t know where this transformation occurred, whether it is the influence of another language early in the development of English, whether it is the miracle of the human brain, and the natural evolution of human language. But this is how English is, at this point in time.

There is a legitimate English sentence that maintains the subject-verb agreement: “I saw (that) your other parks her car” but that has a different meaning and that different meaning would probably be reflected verbally in a different inflection. Perhaps it would be said in a tone of surprise. “Brian, I saw (that) your mother parks the car in the street. Why doesn’t she just park the car in the driveway?” Or “Brian, I saw (that) your mother parks her own car. Why doesn’t she use the valet service?”

The above sentence and sentence structure is a statement of general truth, not a referral to a particular instance, as in your original sentence, “I saw my mother park the car (this morning when she got home from shopping)”, which can be attributed to a particular time and place.

Are we being thorough enough?

the ESL HELP! Desk

We followed up with this comment:

Gerry,

By the way, in both “I saw your mother parks the car in the street. Why doesn’t she just park the car in the driveway?” and “I saw your mother parks her car. Why doesn’t she use the valet service?” and sentences of that nature, referring to general situation not specific instance, the “that” can be omitted. It exists in the lower transformation. Hence, it is possible to say “I saw that your mother parks the car in the street. Why doesn’t she just park in the driveway?” or “I saw that your mother parks her car. Why doesn’t she use the valet service?”

In your original sentence, “I saw my mother park the car (when she got home from shopping)”, in which we are referring to a particular instance (and also “I saw my mother parking the car”) the “that” does NOT exist in the lower transformation. Thus, one CANNOT say “I saw that my mother park the car when she got home from shopping.”

Just to make sure you have the fuller picture.

And we were happy to receive this concluding remark:

***

Yes, you are being extremely thorough and I can’t thank you enough for your time. Thank you very much!

******

Your Questions: Present Continuous Tense

July 12, 2009 / ESL Help! Desk / 1 Comment

We received the following question from one of our readers:

We use the present continuous tense in a complex sentence when the subordinate clause begins with when and the whole sentence refers to the future.

Would it be incorrect to say: Before I watch TV, I’m doing my homework.

There are two answers:

1) If you are referring to the present, to what typically happens, then the answer is “NO”, it would not be correct. In this case, you would say “Before I watch TV (every night), I do my homework.”

2) If you are referring to the future, such as tomorrow or tonight, then the answer is “YES AND NO”. The possibilities are:

a) “Before I watch TV (tonight), I’m doing my homework.” or –

b) “Before I watch TV (tonight), I’m going to do my homework.” Notice that in this case we use the present continuous form ” ~ going (to)” + the base form of your main verb.

I hope this answers your questions.

Thank you,

The ESL Help! Desk