7. Subject-Verb Agreement

Subjects and verbs must AGREE with one another in number (singular or plural).  Thus, if a subject is singular, its verb must also be singular; if a subject is plural, its verb must also be plural.

1.Two or more singular (or plural) subjects joined by and act as a plural compound subject and take a plural verb (singular + singular = plural). The ranger and the camper see the beer.

2.Two or more SINGULAR subjects joined by or (or nor) act as a singular compound subject and, therefore, take a singular verb to agree.

The ranger or the camper sees the beer.

3. Some nouns are regularly plural in form, but singular in meaning.

The news looks good today.

4. Use a singular verb with distances, periods of time, sums of money, etc., when considered as a unit. Ten dollars is a high price to pay.

8.Comment on the classification of nouns according to their lexical meaning.

Classification of nouns.

Nouns fall under two classes: (A) proper nouns; (B) common nouns.

A. Proper nouns are individual names given to separate persons or things. (personal names (Mary), geographical names (Kyiv), the names of the months and of the days of the week, names of ships, hotels, clubs etc.

common nouns are words, which describe a class of entities (such as country, animal, planet, person or ship). Thus there are different groups of common nouns: class nouns, collective nouns, nouns of material and abstract nouns.

1. Class nouns denote persons or things belonging to a class. They are countables and have two numbers: sinuglar and plural. They are generally used with an article.1

2.Collective nouns denote a number or collection of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit.

3. Nouns of material denote material: iron, gold,

4. Abstract nouns denote some quality, state, action or idea: kindness, sadness, fight. They are usually uncountable.

9. Comment on the formation of the genitive case + текст.

Also called the possessive case, the genitive case is when we add apostrophe S (’s) to show possession, that something belongs to another or a type of relationship between things.

We normally use the ’s with people, animals though it can also be used with places, organizations and companies (which suggest a group of people).

It is not common to use the ’s with non-living things.

• Singular nouns and plural n. not ending in s: add ‘s in the end.

• Plural nouns ending in s: only add the apostrophe without s

• Sg noun ending in s: a) most names – add ‘s; b) classical or religious names – add only the apostrophe.

• Possessive nouns as part of a phrase: the same rules as above. Sometimes more than one word/noun is a possessive.

• No noun: If the meaning is clear, we can use the possessive without a noun after it. (e.g.: Her hair is longer than Jill’s).

10.Dependent genitive case.

The dependent genitive may be of two kinds:

1) the specifying genitive.

It may be replaced by the of-phrase. This genitive case is used with proper names, as a rule. The common meanings are those of:

a) possession: Mary’s doll, Mary’s new doll;

b) personal or social relations: John’s wife;

f) authorship: Byron’s poems;

The specifying genitive may also be used with:

a) collective nouns: the government’s decision;

b) the names of countries, towns and continents: Britain’s population, Europe’s future;

2) The classifying (descriptive) genitive

The noun in the genitive case here completely loses its meaning of possession and comes to denote a quality and refers to a whole class of similar objects: a girls’ school (= a school for girls)