THE GRAMMAR eT) 4 Form, Meaning, and Use for English Language Teachers THIRD EDITION Diane Larsen-Freeman Marianne Celce-Murcia NATIONAL a Bsc Picasa: LUN! Kacavet—————E Copular Verbs and Subject-Verb Agreement Introduction in Chapter 2, we introduced a category of verbs called linking verbs. They are often referred to as copular verbs, verbs that link the subject with the predicate. They connect the subject of «sentence % additional information concerning the subject, such as the subject’ identity and qualities. Marion isa librarian. Sheis helpful. As may be evident from our examples, the most common linking verb is the copula to be (is being one form of the he verb). Many languages do not have an equivalent verb, Chinese, ‘or example, doesn’t use a be verb in sentences with adjectives such as belpfit, our second example, especially when the sentence contains an auxiliary verb, such as will (Chan, 2010, 2014). In other words, a perfectly acceptable Chinese sentence in its English translation 's She will very helpful. Then, too, African-American Vernacular English, Hebrew, Arabic, | and Russian, do not use a copula before adjectives, e.g., He crazy. ‘Other typical problems for Russian learners are the substitution of the auxiliary verb do | for be, ¢.g., "Does Prague a nice city? and the overuse of be in sentences with other main verbs, e.g., “He isle sport. (Unlu & Hatipoghu, 2012). Similarly, Japanese learners omit the copula in English, e.g., “My father a teacher and overuse it elsewhere, e., "He i dike music (Tode, 2003). Tide observes that such overuse errors may be due to students treating the frequent sequence of pronoun + isas a formula, In other words, students are not thinking in terms of supplying copula verb; they are simply using pronoun + és asa clause-initial unit. Another feature of the English verb zo be is that its five forms make it the most irregular erb in English. For students who speak languages without a copular verb, learning to use one then will be a challenge, especially for students at the beginning proficiency level. ‘A far more persistent challenge for ESL/EFL smdents is remembering to put the ~s on the end of other present tense verbs when the subject is the third person singular {He watks to school), Perhaps for a combination of reasons—its relative infrequency, as compared with other forms of verbs, its lack of salience (the final -s, in al its forms, is hard » detect in speech), and the fact chat it possesses limited semantic content—all conspire to make the addition of -s a notorious problem long after students have gone beyond the inning level. 5758 In this chapter, we will examine more closely the be verb and other copular verbs. Then, we will examine the forms of other verbs, especially focusing on the third person singular present tense, We will discuss the rule of subject-verb agreement in English, whereby the verb must agree in number and person with the subject. One would think that making the verb form agree with the subject would be especially easy in English, there are relatively few verb forms; however, as we shall see, subject-verb agreement presents some difficulty even for native speakers of English. One reason for this is that the prescriptive rules that learners are given often clash with actual usage. Thus, even though subject-verb agreement appears to be a rule about form, the long-term learning challenge is learning when to apply it Copular Verbs ‘There are at least four very good reasons for making a distinction between copular verbs (especially the be verb) and other verbs, First of all, be, which is the most frequent verb in English, has more distinct forms with respect to person, number, and tense than any other verb in English. The traditional paradigm for de compared with that fora lexical verb such as ‘orlk makes this clear: ‘COPULA BE “Present Tense Past Tense Person Singular Phural Singular Ploral ‘st Tam weare Iwas we were and you are you are you were you were 3rd he/she is they are he/shesitwas _| they were es VERB WALK Present Tense Past Tense Person Singular Plural “Singular Plural ist Iwalk we walk [ I walked we walked and you walk you walk youwalked | youwalked aed hefsherit walks | they walk he/she/t walked | they walked ‘Thus, verb like walk has two present-tense forms and one past-tense form Present: walks—third person singular walk—allother persons and numbers Past; walked—all persons and numbers The verb be, on the other hand, has three distinet present-tense and two past-tense forms to distinguish person and number (singular or plural). Some of the forms are more restricted in their range than others, and this is represented in the following diagrams: The Grammar BookIse person se Iscand 3rd person sg f ~< (he she, {™ a" [> ) 3rd person sg =e (re, she i) everthing else everything eee present tense past tense Second, the copula be may be followed by adjective phrases, a defining characteristic that it shares with many other copular verbs.' Although fe is the most frequent and the semantically most neutral copula, there are three other types of copular verbs: 1. perception copulas (mental or sensory) appear feel They | look | funny (tome). smelt sound taste state coputas (tend to take participial adjectives)” lie rest stand They protected, 3. change-of-statecoputas (not all of these copulas collocate with all of these adjectives)" become | faut |e | get true They | 9e¢ bs 90 | grow | | wild tum The copula be can be followed not only by adjective phrases, but also by noun phrases and adverbial phrases" (ie, itis the grammatically most flexible eopular verb): attractive in New York st of the other copular verbs can be followed only by adjective phrases except for the e-of- state copulas become! and tu”n,* which can be followed by noun phrases as well as ective phrases: Naomi become {7° attractive traitor | Chapter 4: Copular Verbs and Subject: Verb Agreement 59‘The third reason that copula be is so different is due to its syntactic behavior. It behaves like an auxiliary verb with regard to negation (see Chapter 10), question formation Chapter 11), and other constructions. What this means is the copula is very different from other verbs like malt, which require the addition of a do auxiliary to form questions and negatives if no other auxiliary verb is present: tal fi] amengineer. Hal walkto work fs] Hatamenginer? as] Hal walk work? Hal ta teacher. Hal dows walkchome. Other copular verbs take a do auxiliary in questions and negatives, too. Did he get taller? {don’t feel well. Failure to recognize the special status of the he copula in the formation of questions and negative sentences leads learners to make questions and sentences such as the following: "Do they be happy? (for‘Are they happy”) *We don't be teachers. for"We arent teachers’) Finally, as we have seen, the copula fe does not occur in all languages, but all langu have verbs. Especially in the present tense, many languages have nothing equivalent to the copula be; speakers of such languages simply express the literal equivalent of sentences in their L1 like the three below, and this pattern readily transfers to English during their initial learning stage: Hal engineer. *Hal in next room Hal tal. In sum, a verb is copular if it specifically predicates something about the subject of the verb. However, we agree with Langacker (1991) that be is not merely a semantically empty linking verb, as some linguists have suggested. For Langacker, be is a true verb marking a stative relation (p. 65). Subject-Verb Agreement Mi Third Person Singular Present Standard grammatical treatments state that for verbs other than fe, number agreement between the subject and verb (sometimes referred to as subject-verb concord) is a factor only in the present tense, where third person singular forms are explicitly inflected and other forms are not: ‘Number Person _| Singular Plural Ist I speak French, We speak French, 2nd You speak French. You speak French, 3rd He/sherit (the parrot) speaks French, They speak French, The Grammar Book |According to the rule of subject-verb agreement, then, the subject and verb number choice will agree: In the present tense, we use the third person singular inflection (-s or the fe foom to) ifthe subject refers to one entity, whether it isa singular proper name, a singular ‘eamnmon oun, a non-count noun, ora third person singular pronoun, Flsewhere—for nouns fr pronouns referring to more than one entity or for first or second person pronouns referring .¢ entity’—no inflection is used in the present tense: woo Third person singularinfectionon verb __—_‘Noinflectionon verb Leon wallf to school. The Smiths walk to church. Thebus sto nee, These books contain good information. m | ‘This water taste] funny. You} want an apple. They } ' sine want] an apple, vou | Wantan apple To this formulation, we should add that if there is an inflectable, tense-bearing auxiliary such as be or have, it is the auxiliary verb that takes the third person singular inflection e main verb): Leoni walking to schoo ‘This water [has] boiled for 10 minutes. Some Typical Learner Productions As we mentioned earlier, ESL/EFL. learners tend to simplify and leave off altogether the third person singular inflection: “Sharon livein Seattle, *Harry say he will come. Cceasionally, however, some leamers will overgeneralize the inflection and apply it to uninfected forms, such as modal auxiliaries, orto verbs follwing modals (see Chapter 8): ‘Jack cans dance disco. ‘ack can dances disco. cy also may overuse itas an agreement marker with subjects of inappropriate person and/ number: 4 “They | hangs out atthe mall on the weekends. “You nother reason why some learners overuse this form is that they interpret the -s ending as ral marker on the verb and use in agreement with plural subjects: “they “The boys nally, it has also been observed that some Spanish speakers tend to initially overuse the -r inflection with the second person singular pronoun because a similar form is used in their language when the subject noun reflects this person: Spansh:Tahablaingls, English You speak English, Chapter 4 Copulor Verbs and Subject Vers Agreeenent aBy far, the most common error in subject-verb agreement is the first one we mentioned, that of the learner simply omicting the inflection for third person singulae. Research in both language typology and second language acquisition can help us understand why this is so. ‘The languages of the world can be roughly divided into topic-prominent languages with pragmatic word order (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) and subject-prominent languages with grammatical word order (e.g-, English, Spanish, and Arabic); the former never mark subject-verb agreement, whereas the latter typically do. Thus, it seems plausible that learners of English with a topie-prominent first language would find it more difficult to master subject-verb agreement than learners whose native language is subject-prominent like English. However, research in second language acquisition by Fuller and Gundel (1987) suggests that most learners pass through an carly topic-prominent stage regardless of their first language. In analyzing the elicited oral narratives produced by Jow-intermediate learners of English, these researchers found no significant differences between native speakers of topic-prominent languages and those of subject-prominent languages. Speakers of both types demonstrated lack of agreement. Language acquisition researchers (e.g., Klein & Perdue, 1997) have also reported that untutored adult learners with many different language backgrounds often initially speak a “basic variety” of the language that they are learning—one with no inflections, where words occur in invariant form. Agreement errors may be due to phonological or perceptual factors rather than syntactic or morphological eross-linguistic differences. ESL/EFL teachers should be aware of the fact that some learners of English fully understand the third person singular present ending and can even produce it systematically when they write in English; however, they omit it frequently when they are speaking. One reason for this is because the sound system of their native language tends not to permit final /s/ sounds in particular or final consonants in general. Speakers of French and a variety of other languages have been observed to do this when speaking English. Of course, other reasons for the slow and late acquisition of the third person singular present inflection on the vetb—even when there is no phonological interference from the learner's native language—might be its lack of perceptual saliency* and its low frequency of occurrence in native speaker speech (Larsen-Freeman, 1976; Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2005), The third person singular present tense inflection tends to be omitted for these and other reasons as well. For example, the omission of the -» is a feature of English as a lingua franca, likely due to a regularization process Jenkins, 2012). Also, it is the only inflection in the present tense and has little communicative utility since the person/number is almost always clear from the subject noun phrase, just as itis with the other persons and numbers that do not take any inflection. Such is not the case, of course, when the subject remains the same whether itis singular or plural. For example, with nouns of animals, such as “sheep,” the inflection is meaningful Inthe spring, the sheep graze in the meadow. In the spring, the sheep However, there are relatively few times when the subject is not distinguished in number. Of course, the 5 is also important in distinguishing present and past tense when they are isomophic, as they are with verbs such as read, bit, it, etc: fazes in the meadow. Stan reads the newspaper every day. Stan read the newspaper every day. ‘The Grammar Book ’MEANING Reid (1991) believes thae the subject-verb agreement rule sycomaticity, but that its use reflects a series of semantic choic aker-writer. In other words, it is not simply a matter of agreement based on form. are reasons for using a singular or plural verb. Reid proposes that all English ous (in this case, nouns that happen to funetion as subjects) have a number, which cither one ot more than one. The number more than one can be encoded either lexically (cas. people, they) or, more typically, morphologically with the plural inflection -# (e.g. several Joys), In some cases, lexical and morphological number can even co-occur and give new ng to words (e.g. peoples). Similarly, all English verbs have a number. Except for the verb be, English verbs encode number only in the present tense: js not grounded in syntactic and decisions made by the Present tense verb ending Meaning Example . One The boy runs. a ‘More than one The boys run. < further proposes that the choice of number is made separately for both the subject noun hie verb (be or present tense lexical verbs) and that both choices contribute independently to the speaker’s message. This perspective allows Reid to explain why the number of the subject nova and the verb, while most often the same, do not always agree since all combinations are possible though not equally frequent. The most frequent choices (.c., the agreements) are the ‘exomples in the shaded boxes numbered 1 and 4: NOUN SUBJECT = One ‘More Than One Theboy 1 Tendollarsisnot 2 One likes candy. a lot of money. Thefamily 3 The boys 4 ‘More Than One are all here like candy. examples in boxes 2 and 3 are unusual in that an overtly plural subject in 2 is reinterpreted 26. singular lump sum, and an overtly singular subject in 3 is reinterpreted as a plural entity We know this has been done by the speaker/writer because of the verb forms chosen: singular f'n 2 and plural are in 3. The choice is complex, and for Reid, itis based on the speaker's message and communicative intent in each ease." Examples of Reid’ (1991) semantic system are easy to understand and cause little or no «lifficuley—at least not at the conceptual level. Here are ten examples where this is the case. {. Collective nouns (see Chapter 17), like the one in box 3 of the preceding matrix, may take cither a singular or plural verb inflection depending on the meaning," Ifthe subject noun is conceived of as one entity, the verb carries the -s inflection; if the subject is felt to be more than one entity, the verb takes no inflection. (Note that other forms showing number agreement (e.g., determiners or pronouns) may also change to reflect the mumiber selected.) Chapter 4:Copular Verbs and Subject Verb Agreement 8‘Our school team has won all Its games. (= the team as whole) Cur school tearm have won all thelr games. (= individual team members) 2, Some common and proper nouns ending in -s, including ~es nouns and certain diseases, are always conceived of as a single entity and take a singular verb inflection: No news is good news. Physics is a difficult subject. ‘This seriesis very interesting. Wales is lovely to vist. Measles isa contagious disease. 3. Titles of books, plays, operas, films, and such works—even when plural in form—take the singular verb inflection because they are conceived asa single entity: Great Expectations was written by Dickens. The Pirates of Penzance is my favorite operetta. 4, Nouns occurring in sets of ewo take the singular when the noun pair's present but take the plural when pair is absent—even if only one pair is being referred to: Apairoftrousersis onthe sofa. This pair of shoes needs new heels. Todd's trousers areon the sofa. These shoes need new heels. 5. A number of normally takes the plural, while tbe number of normally takes the singular: ‘A number of students have dropped that course. ‘The number of students inthis schoo! Is 2,000. ‘This generalization holds true most of the time because the noun number in the phrase the mumber of generally modifies or implies a single entity such as a sum oF a totality, Whereas the noun number in the phrase a number of normally modifies or implies more than one entity." 6. Fractions and percentages take a singular verb inflection when modifying a noneount noun and the plural verb inflection when they modify a plural noun; either the singular or the plural verb inflection may be used when they modify a collective noun, depending on the speaker's meaning: noncount: One half of the toxic waste has escaped, Fifty percent of the toxic waste has escaped. plurak Two thirds of the students are satisfied with the class. Sixty-six percent of the students are satisfied with the class. is Christian. Is Christian. are Christians. Ten pereentfthe population of ay | 7. Majority/Minority (Of)" a. The proximity principle When majority or minority are followed by an of phrase, the proximity principle dictates subject-verb agreement in the vast majority of cases. In other words, when the noun in the of phrase—which will be situated nearest the verb—is singular, singular agreement results, and when it is plural, plural agreement results: The Grammar Book‘Agreement | TypeofNoun | Example * However, the majority of policy analysis has determined salary increases have a minimum singular | singular effect in retaining teachers. + Only small minority of human communication is mediated through the words used. + The minority of buyers insist on a golf-course view. + Just because a minority of drivers abuse a privilege Is no reason to get rid of the privilege. plural plural Collective nouns The situation is somewhat more complex when no ofphraseis present. An explanation that is often put forward for subject-verb agreement treats majority and minority as collective nouns. Either singular or plural subject-verb agreement is possible depending on whether the speaker/writer is viewing the majrity/mninority in question j as comprised of its many parts or as a single entity Aareement | Example ‘Most grade-three kids say they like reading, and the vast majority think they're good at it. plural } ‘Among other voters, a majority thinks that climate change is | singular ‘caused by people. j 8. Plural unit words of distance, money, and time (like the example in box 2 of the matrix con page 63) take the singular verb inflection when one entity is implied, but a plural verb inflection when more than one entity is encoded in the subject money: 2 million dollars isa lot of money. time: _Syearsisa long time to spend on an M.A. thesis. one distance: 1,000 miles is a tong distance. entity distance: 10 miles are to be added to this freeway next year. money: dollars are on the table in the kitchen. time: 3 years (Le., 1602, 1649, and 1687) are missing from this set of calendars for the 17th century. Arichmetical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) take the singular because they are perceived as reflecting a single numerical entity on both sides of the equation or equal sign. For example: more than. one entity addition; One plus one 7 Chapter 4 Capulor Verbs ana Subject Verb Agreement 6s10, The quantifiers all (f), lor of fos of, and plenty of take singular verb agreement if the subject head noun is noncount, but plural verb agreement if the subject head noun is plural: Alot of nonsense was published about that incident, | Alot of people were present when it happened, | USE | So far, what we have discussed concerning the form of the subject-verb agreement rule and | the meaningful choice of which verb to use (the reason) do not sound especially difficult | However, when it comes to use, there are complications, partly due to conflicts between prescriptive rules and actual usage. Below we discuss five such instances."* 1. Quantifiers None. Rules conflict for none, and sometimes for aff, each, and every. Many prescriptive grammars state that when used as a subject, none is always singular regardless of what follows in a prepositional phrase. The argument for this rule has been that mone means not ane. However, usage surveys give us a different picture of what native speakers are doing and thinking when they use monte. When none refers to a noncount noun, the inflection is uncontroversially singular None ofthe toxic waste has escaped, But when none refers to a plural noun—human or nonhuman—usage seems to be mare ot less equally divided between the singular and plural inflection, A check of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) found that plural forms of the verb followed none as often as singular forms: ‘None of those things are neurological. None of the jobs have lasted for longer than 13 months. None of the injuries was life-threatening, None of the cases has come to trial. Clearly, the traditional prescription that none is always singular is inadequate. Additional research based on analysis of tokens from current spoken and written English should be carried ut to see if a more descriptively adequate rule of usage exists, In the meantime, ESL/EFL, teachers must be aware of the fact that when the subject none refers to a plural countable noun, the plural verb inflection may well be chosen if current usage is any indication. Although none is the most problematic quantifier with respect to subject-verb agreement, ESL/EFL learners also experience problems with the quantifiers all, ecb, and every (one) All. The prescriptive rules for subject-verb agreement with aif are as follows: If the noun that all modifies is a noncount subject, then subject-verb agreement is singular Al (of) (the) water is polluted, fail modifies a countable plural subject noun, subject-vecb agreement is plural All(of (the) students have arrived. A problem arises, however, when aif is used with a collective noun subject. Theoretically, one should be able to use either singular or plural subject-verb agreement in such cases. We tested such an item with 40 native speakers of English (graduate students and professors), and the results seem to support this theoretical duality: All of my family _present, | 9% | 59%; are 4396; SP 66 he Grammar BookMany style books, however, admonish us not to use the preposition of after the quantifier all jn out writing, We thus administered a similar item, minus the of to the same group of people f week later. The results were as follows: All my family. _ present. 15-6896; are 2656; used both—6% “Thus the presence or absence of the prepositional phrase with of seems to have an effect on subect-verb agreement, since in the rem without of our consultants favored singular agreement ; noticeably greater degree. There are clearly other factors at play though (see Peterson, 1990) Each or Every (One). When the subject quantifier is each or every (one), the rules are more straightforward. When the quantified subject noun is singular, there is no problem: the subject-verb agreement is always singular Each Every student has a textbook. | each andevery However, when the quantified noun refers to a definite plural set, there can be problems since the quantifiers are grammatically singular, yer the set that they are modifying is notionally plural: cschothiseramples [M2 ou of content | ein our mints Every one of these athletes ditional prescriptive rule maintains that singular subject-verb agreement applies in such cases because each and every (one) are functioning as grammatically singular subjects. In theve cases, native speaker preference appears to closely mirror the prescriptive rule, since the same 40 consultants that reported divided usage for all were in agreement (93 percent o more) .e verbs in the above two sentences should be was and rans. A search of COCA also shows th a preference for singular verbs with eaeb and every .ch of you is questioned privately. "says author Allison. However, there were some instances of plural verbs, although they were far less frequent: each of these were performed six times. “Every one of us is a hero in wai and every one of us were happy to see him again. 2. Clausal and phrasal subjects ‘Traditional grammars tell us that when a clause fanetions as a subject, the subject-verb agreement is singular—regardless of any plural noun phrases that occur as part of the subject clause or the verh phrase. For example: That the children want friends doesn't surprise me. What they wants revolutions everywhere. This rule also extends to phrasal subjects that are gerunds or infinitives because they cake singular verb agreement; however, they seem to cause fewer learning problems Jausal subjects: Reading books is my hobby. Torris human. What we find, in fact, is that this rule is applied most of the time, but not always. A search of the MICASE corpus (Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English) turned up several exaniples where the main verb was in the plural, presumably due to the plural noun that followed it Chapter 4 Copulor Verbs and Subject-Ver Agreement o7‘What we see are interpreted in gendered terms. What we see are populations that fluctuate, It seems that especially in spoken discourse, where speakers have to contend with time and. processing constraints, this rule of subject-verb agreement is not always strictly adhered to. 3, Correlatives: The proximity principle For the correlatives either... rand neither... nor traditional grammarians argue for a proxin rule; that is, subject-verb agreement should occur with the subject noun nearest to the ver: er my sister oF my brothersare going to dot. her my brothers or my sisters going do it. Neither the books nor the movie was helpful. Neither the movie nor the books were helpful Survey data suggest that speakers do seem to follow the proximity principle, although not uniformly, especially in the case of neitber...nor Either your eyesight or yourbrakes__atfault. was —31%; were—69% (van Shai Either the professor or her assistants, ‘explain every lesson has to 239%: haveto—67% (Fathady, 1977) Neither the students nor the teacher __ that textbook. Tikes 49%; like—51% (van Shaik, 1976) generally support these questionnaire findings: Examples from COC ‘The committee found no evidence that either the book or the negotiations were mentioned at the meeting. .nneither the appointment nor the hearings were about race. Personal pronouns pose special problems when used with full correlatives, where the rule of proximity would have us produce either you o Iam, neither you nor be i, and so on. In such cases, Farhady and van Shaik found even less agreement with the proximity principle in their data than they did when correlatives involved lexical nouns: Neither younorhe ___able to answer the question. ‘was 409%; were—60% (Farhad, 197) Neither you nor! trained for that job. ‘am —1 38g 15 are—73% (van Shaik, 1976) the immediately preceding example is especially interesting because are is a colloquial gap- filling substitute for amv in some other constructions (I'v gong, too, aren't [? Arent I lucky?). Am is apparently perceived by native speakers as too limited a form for use in those correlatives where / is the second noun phrase constituent 4, There We devote Chapter 23 to a thorough discussion of there in subject position, so we won't delve too deeply into issues of its subject-verb agreement here, Suffice it to say that there are complications here as well. Traditionally, the form of the verb, typically fe in sentences with there in subject position should agree with the noun phrase that follows the verb, what is called “the logical subject.” ‘Theres a leak in the kitchen sink. ‘There is water on the float. ‘There are no plumbers available when you need one! ‘The Grammar BookHowever, speakers appear to make two exceptions to this generalization, First, with a syapound subject, they apply the proximity principle Theres a leak in the kitchen sink and one in the bathroom. ‘Andy in the case of the contracted singular form there, itis often used for both singular and plural subjects in everyday speech: ‘There's no plumbers when you need one! Crawford (2005) explains “the tendency of spoken language to use less elaboration and more contraction, combined with the processing constraints of spoken language, results in the formulaic use of contracted existential there + be (there3) without conscious reference to the prescriptive rule of agreement”(p. 59) 5. The non-intervention principle One problem that frequently arises for both native and non-native speakers of English is identifying the true subject of the sentence. This often occurs when subjects include a head hnoun and a long modifying clause or phrase, especially one with a plural noun that precedes the main verb directly. ‘The main argument asit has been portrayed in all the news stories ism. .e verb isagrees with the head noun argument, but stories directly precedes the main verb { could cause confusion as to which form of the be verb to use, Many reference grammars make a point of emphasizing that a singular subject noun or pronoun should take a singular verb inflection regardless of what else occurs between the subject and the verbs that is, the speaker or writer should ignore all plural forms in ince:vening prepositional phrases and expressions such as together with, along with, as well as, and not others: For the most part, the nonintervention principle seems to be well supported ‘The major cause of highway accidents in 1976 ___drunk drivers. were 796 (Farhady 1977) _ toopenastore. lans—84%;plan—V6% (van Shaik 1976) ‘The boy, not his parents, being punished. 288%; are—12% (van Shalk 1976) Neither of therm was convinced by what he sald. (COCA) Peter, along with his brothers, Conclusion many English sentences, subject-verb number agreement is straightforward and noncontroversial. However, itis quite clear that a number of unresolved questions remain. ‘When a form is syntactically singular but notionally plural (or vice versa), there is a potential conflict. Agreement based on form is straightforward, but when agreement is driven by -aning of use, this gives rise to the possibility of variation among users. Here, Reid’ (1991) formulation, which holds that all co-occurrences of subject noun number and of verb number ave possible, though not equally frequent, helps to explain meaning-driven choices and guide listener or reader to the intended interpretation. This is what we mean by teaching reasons rother than, or in addition to, rules. Teach stuclents the meanings of forms, so they can see why speakers make the choices that they do. Chapter 4: Copular Verbs and Subjec-Ver Agreement70 ‘There is also the question of appropriate use, Our advice to ESL/EFL teachers is that they be aware of the major traditional rules and also be aware of those instances where current uusage seems to clearly deviate from the traditional prescription. Also, teachers should keep in ‘mind that informal contexts permit a greater range of acceptable forms than formal contexts; therefore, flexible correction standards, which differ for formal writing than for informal writing and colloquial speech, might be in order: Teaching Suggestions 1. Form, The copula de causes ESL/EFL stuclents trouble because it is the most irregular verb in the English language. lot of practice will have to be given to ll its various forms Present Past lam weare | Iwas we were you are youare | youwere you were he, she, itis they are_| he, she, itwas they were a. Have your students associate forms of the de verb with the appropriate subject pronouns, asin the chart. One way to do so is to have your students introduce themselves and ask for the names of others using the formulaic question “What is your name?” Teacher: am Mr. Simon. Whats your name? Student ¥: am Manuel, What is your name? (to $2) ‘Student 2:|am Elka, What is your name? (to 53) b. Then give students an opportunity to practice another form of the be verb and another formulaic question Teacher:| am from the United States Where are you from? Student 1: | am from Mexico, Where are you from? (to S2) ‘Student 2:1 am from Bulgaria, Where are you frorn? (to $3) ‘Then the students can ask each other the question. ¢. Have the students do a chain drill, adding a name with each turn. Student ¥:1am Manvel. Student: Student 4. Finally, students can introduce themselves to the clas. Student 1:|am Manuel. lam from Mexico. ‘Student 2:1 am Eika, | am from Bulgaria, {eis Manuel, and | am Elka leis Manel, she i Eka, and lam Fatimah, 2. Form. Badalamenti and Henner-Stanchina (2007) suggest using the names of famous people from all over the world to practice the copula e with country of origin and nationality For example, the teacher can give one or two examples and then provide only a name. ‘Arnold Schwarzeneggeris from Austria, He's Austrian, Messi is from Argentina, He’ Argentinian 3. Form, The problematic area with regular present-tense verbs other than be involves the third person singular form of the verb. Since the third person singular form of the verb is the only one inflected for person and number agreement in the present tense, ESL/EFL students frequently and persistently omit the necessary -s marker by simplifying or by The Grammat Book j |; jeralizing the basie pattern to third person singular. Practice with the present tense iB P i p hhould thus put a great deal of focus on the third person singular inflection and on the rntrast with all other persons. The teacher can introduce a fictional character Jack and zl about what he does every day. To enhance the input, the teacher can stress the verb, aking sure that the students hear the -r inflection, He gets up at 7:00 am He runs in the park at 5:00 ra, He eats breakfast at 7330, He comes home at 6:00. Hegoesto work at 800. ete &’5 schedule can be practiced by the class with the teacher using pictures and/or a clock th movable hands as prompts. Then students can do pairwork. The teacher writes on board “get up,” “eat breakfast,” “go to school.” Each member of the pair can make a tentence about his or her schedule. For example: ‘Maria: | get up at 7:30 | eat breakfast at 8:00 | go to work at 900, arias partner then reports to the class: Partner: Maria gets up at 730, She eats breakfast at 800. she goes to work at 9:00, Form. For intermediate-level students, Wisniewska, Riggenbach, and Samuda (2007) uuggest that job descriptions and names of occupations be first matched and then generated to practice the third person singular present tense a, He wears a uniform and usually travels many miles a day. He serves food and drinks, but he hardly ever prepares them for himself He's__ b. She wears a uniform and drives many miles a day. She never serves food or drinks she's aflightattendant — anurse teacher a bus driver a librarian a student Now students write similar descriptions for the job names that are stil left Meaning. ‘To practice with intermediate learners the notion that it is sometimes possible ‘© use a plural or singular verb with a particular noun depending on how the noun is, construed, give the students sentences and ask them to respond with “one” when the abject is singular and “more than one” when the subject is plural. They should also specify the entity or unit being referred to. a, Teacher: The class is going to celebrate at the end ofthis term. Students: one (las) ', Teacher: The 20 minutes are going to pass quickly ‘Students: more than one (minute) & Teacher: Twenty minutes is not long time! Students: one (time unit) 4, Teacher: The faculty are meeting afterschool today. Students: more than one (faculty member) . Ask your more advanced students to conduet a survey of class members regarding heir preferences in how they spend their free time or some other issue that you think will nterest them. The survey should be designed, conducted, and the results summarized in sinall groups. Each group should report to the class, using the quantifiers, fractions, and ohrases such as the majority of, a nionber of, tc 7. Use. Frodesen and Eyring (2007) suggest that teachers give students many statements nnd have them decide which items have verb forms that are appropriate for formal ct Verb Agreement Chapter 4: Copular Vers and Su n‘written contexts (ie, the traditional prescriptive rule) and which would be acceptable for informal written or spoken contexts: a. Neither of those political surveys are valid because the sample was not random. b, In conclusion, cither of the textbooks reviewed above is an excellent choice for an introductory chemistry course ¢. Theresa number of errors in this report. 4, As far as we know, none of the experiment’ results has been duplicated to date. Exercises ‘Tost your knowledge of what has been presented, 1. Provide an original example sentence illustrating each of the following concepts. Underline the pertinent word(s) in your example. a. copula be {third person singular prosent bb, a copular verb other than be inflection . an auxiliary function of be 9. the proximity principle . collective noun subject 1h, the nonintervention principle @. noncount noun subject i. subject-verb agreement with a clausal subject 2. What are two structural reasons for distinguishing the copula be from other verbs in English? 3. In what instances should your ESL/EFL students be aware that verbs must agree with subjects in person and number? Also, in what instances does subject-verb agreement not apply? ‘Name and illustrate two cases where a traditional subject-verb agreement rule is not supported by current usage, ‘Test your ability to apply what you know. 5. If your students produce the following, and they want to speak and write Standard English, what would you tell them? a. “Is you from Mexico? 4. *Nora wills read the book. bb, *Felix go to school every day. e. *They sings in a choir. ©. “Tired. £. *Idon't be angry anymore, 6 What will you say to a high-intormodiate ESL/EFL student who complains to you that you correct mistakes in his compositions when he writes sentences like this one, but that he hears native speakers say things like this all the time? Either my roommates or my friend Bill are going to buy the refreshments. How would you present the rules for fractions and percentages to an intermediate- level high schoo! ESL/EFL class? What contexts would you provide to help them have meaningful practice? n The Grammar Book |8. Some noun plurals are irregular (men, mice), and some have a change from 4 (sg.) to si (fh chon witatwiven, How would you review inepelar noun pels With @ vor btormediate ESL/EFL clas? a Ma asda en you whieh correc i he flowing pal of en0c9, Bow moult | (the dentate deanplted th thecal eas no longer undefeated | ‘The majority s upset atthe os. The arty are upet atte oss. | Bibliography } REFERENCES | ; Badalamenti, V, & Henner-Stanchina, C2007). Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and wse 1 (4h ed). t Bock, K., Cutler, A, Eberhard, K., Butterfield, S., Cooper Cutting, J, & Humphreys, K. (2006). Agreement j Crawford, W. 2005). Verb agreement and disagreement. Journal of English Linguistcr, 33(1), 35-61. . j Davies, M. (2008), The carpus af contemporary American English (COCA): 425 million words, 1990-present. { Depractere, L203), On verbal concord with collective nouns in British English, English Language and j Pavhcy, HL (1977). Subjct-verb agreement in English: A nsage ready (Unpublished English 15 paper. Puller JW. & GundelJ. K. (1987). Topie-prominence in interlanguage. Language Leavang, 571), 1-18. Goldschneider J. & DeKeyser, R2005). Explaining the “natural order of 2 morpheme acquisition” in lish: A meta-analysis of multiple determinants. Langugge Leerning, 95(1),27-77. Hudson, R. (1999), Subject-verb agreement in English. English Lamguage and Linguistics 312), 1 207, Jevtins,J.(2012). English as lingua franea from the classroom to the classroom. ELT Four, 66), 186-494 Klein, W, & Perdue, C.(197), The basic variety (Or: Couldn't narural languages be much simpler?) isond Language Rerarc, 13, 301-347 Langacker, RW. (1991), Desrptoe application: Radasons of cognitive grammar (Vol. 2). Standford, CAs ‘anford University Press Larsen-Freeman, D. (1976). An explanation for the morpheme acquisition order of second language comners. Language Learning, 26(1), 125-134 everson, LM. (1990). Subjet-verb agreement wth seletsbjcr quantifiers: A wage study of all each, every, ser, nether, and none (Unpublished independers professional projec), School for International ~ining, Brattleboro, VT. Reid, \V. (1991), Heb and noun marnber in Engh: A ftional explanation. London, Eng Simpson, R. C. Briggs, S. Ly Ovens, J, & Swales,J. M. 2002). Tbe Michigan corps of academic spoken Felt. Retrieved from https//quod.ibsumich edu/m/miease/ land: Longman, Chapter 4 Gopular Verbs and Subjec-Verb Agreement a