英语语法:100 What Is Subject-Complement Agreement?
时间:2019-01-02 作者:英语课 分类:英语语法 Grammar Girl
Grammar Girl here.
In today’s episode we’re going to answer some bizarre and puzzling questions: Can two people share a life? Can two writers share a neck? How many heads does a person have? How many wives do certain men have?
Today's guest-writer, Bonnie Trenga, tells us that the issue at hand is what’s called subject-complement 1 agreement. A complement—that’s m-e-n-t—is a noun that completes meaning (1). Take the sentence “She is my sister.” The words “my sister” are the complement. There’s no agreement problem in that sentence, it's all singular, but what about a sentence like this: “The two girls ate their sandwich”? Does this mean the girls shared one sandwich or did they each have a sandwich?
A few confused listeners have brought up such tricky sentences for us to parse 3. For example, Drue R. asks whether it would be proper to write “They visited each other's shrine 4, or “They visited each other's shrines 5.”
And Kathleen M., poses these questions: Is it “We help clients get the most out of their life” or “We help clients get the most out of their lives”? What about “The writers complained that their neck was sore” or “The writers complained that their necks were sore”?
Those are all good questions that forced us to dig deeply within many grammar resources, hoping they would provide an answer. Most, unfortunately, don’t address this subject.
Obvious Errors
We’re lucky, though, that two grammar authorities do have an answer to these puzzling questions. We'll start simply and work our way up to the more difficult questions.
Our old favorite, Garner's Modern American Usage (2), points out that a common mistake in American and British English is to “attribute one result to two separate subjects, when logically a separate result necessarily occurred with each subject.” So the sentence “He was hit by a pitch two times” is wrong because the batter 6 was hit by two separate pitches, not one pitch two times. You should say, “He was hit by two pitches.”
In the same vein 7, the sentence “Strip malls may be an eyesore, but they sure are convenient” would be incorrect. In this sentence, the subject is “strip malls,” which is plural 8, but the complement is the singular word “eyesore.” This is an obvious error that’s easy to fix; just make everything plural: “Strip malls may be eyesoreS, but they sure are convenient.”
Collective Nouns as Complements 9
Other sentences with a plural subject might not be so easy. What if the complement is a collective noun that you can’t make plural, such as “dignity”? Should you say, “The warriors 10 retained their dignities” or “their dignity”? Well, the answer seems obvious here: “dignities” doesn’t make sense. So the rule with collective nouns that are complements is to keep the complement singular, even with a plural subject (2).
Ambiguous Sentences
Now let’s move into trickier 11 territory, where we encounter ambiguous sentences. Remember our tricky questions about people with more than one neck or more than one life? Here's another one. Should it be “They shook their head,” or “They shook their heads”?
Common sense tells us that people have only one head, but we run into a problem no matter what we say. If we use “heads,” we suggest the ridiculous possibility that they have two heads; if we use “head,” we suggest that they are sharing a head—also ridiculous.
We run into the same problem with the sentence “Both men relied heavily on their wives” (3). If we wrote “Both men relied heavily on their wife,” that would suggest the men share a wife; if we say, “wives,” that suggests each man has more than one wife. It’s a lose-lose situation. As Garner's states, “Sometimes neither the singular nor plural can prevent ambiguity” (2). So we turn to the second grammar source we’re consulting today, Barbara Walraff’s Word Court.
Abstract and Countable 12 Complements
Ms. Walraff presents a number of scenarios 13 and a number of answers. One kind of sentence she discusses is “They taught school,” in which “school” is a singular complement. It appears not to match the plural subject, until we consider that “school” is used in an abstract manner. It wouldn’t make sense to say, “They taught schools.” Heads, necks, and wives, on the other hand, are not abstract. They are countable (and people usually have one of each).
Let’s take the sentence “The writers complained that their neck was sore” and see what Ms. Walraff would say about it. Unlike most grammarians, who are uptight 14 about rules and who want things to be right, she tells us not to worry about it. She states, “It is usually either obvious or beside the point how many of the things are to be paired with the individuals in the subject, and then one needn’t scruple 15 to use the plural…. This is the rule, it seems to me, that really applies to your wives—and your heads.” She seems to approve of using the singular “neck” after the plural “they.” If I had to pick between “their neck” and “their necks,” though, I would probably pick “necks.” It just sounds better to me: “Their necks are sore.” Perhaps it’s a matter of personal taste.
Ms. Walraff spends a couple of pages on this topic and suggests three solutions to this conundrum. The first, as we’ve mentioned, is not to worry about the situation too much. Most subject-complement agreement problems are “innocuous,” she says. OK, we can all relax about it. The grammar police will not show up on our doorsteps. The second is to consider rewriting the sentence, and the third is to add more information that indicates how many of an item you’re talking about. Perhaps in this case we could rewrite it like this: “Both writers had sore necks,” or we could add information by stating, “Both writers complained that they had neck aches caused by staring out their windows too long.”
Conclusion
If we look back at the pairs of sentences that readers were asking about, can we now tell which one in each pair is right? You’d probably be safe using either way, but to avoid crazy-sounding sentences, it’s best to follow Ms. Walraff’s advice: relax, and then reword your sentences or give other clues about how many items you’re talking about. And, as Ms. Walraff warns, if “carefully matching numbers results in ridiculous wording, don’t do it.”
The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier
This podcast was written by Bonnie Trenga, author of The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier, who blogs at sentencesleuth.blogspot.com, and I'm Mignon Fogarty, the author of the paperback 17 book Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.
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- The two suggestions complement each other.这两条建议相互补充。
- They oppose each other also complement each other.它们相辅相成。
- I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手,你能帮我吗?
- He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题,只做了个笼统的表述。
- I simply couldn't parse what you just said.我完全无法对你刚说的话作语法分析。
- It causes the parser to parse an NP.它调用分析程序分析一个名词短语。
- The shrine was an object of pilgrimage.这处圣地是人们朝圣的目的地。
- They bowed down before the shrine.他们在神龛前鞠躬示敬。
- All three structures dated to the third century and were tentatively identified as shrines. 这3座建筑都建于3 世纪,并且初步鉴定为神庙。
- Their palaces and their shrines are tombs. 它们的宫殿和神殿成了墓穴。
- The batter skied to the center fielder.击球手打出一个高飞球到中外野手。
- Put a small quantity of sugar into the batter.在面糊里放少量的糖。
- The girl is not in the vein for singing today.那女孩今天没有心情唱歌。
- The doctor injects glucose into the patient's vein.医生把葡萄糖注射入病人的静脉。
- Most plural nouns in English end in's '.英语的复数名词多以s结尾。
- Here you should use plural pronoun.这里你应该用复数代词。
- His business skill complements her flair for design. 他的经营技巧和她的设计才能相辅相成。
- The isoseismal maps are valuable complements to the instrumental records. 等震线图是仪器记录有价值的补充资料。
- I like reading the stories ofancient warriors. 我喜欢读有关古代武士的故事。
- The warriors speared the man to death. 武士们把那个男子戳死了。
- This is the general rule, but some cases are trickier than others. 以上是一般规则,但某些案例会比别的案例更为棘手。 来自互联网
- The lower the numbers go, the trickier the problems get. 武器的数量越低,问题就越复杂。 来自互联网
- The word "person" is a countable noun.person这个词是个可数名词。
- Countable nouns have singular and plural forms.可数名词有单数和复数之分。
- Further, graphite cores may be safer than non-graphite cores under some accident scenarios. 再者,根据一些事故解说,石墨堆芯可比非石墨堆芯更安全一些。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
- Again, scenarios should make it clear which modes are acceptable to users in various contexts. 同样,我们可以运用场景剧本来搞清楚在不同情境下哪些模式可被用户接受。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
- He's feeling a bit uptight about his exam tomorrow.他因明天的考试而感到有点紧张。
- Try to laugh at it instead of getting uptight.试着一笑了之,不要紧张。
- It'seemed to her now that she could marry him without the remnant of a scruple.她觉得现在她可以跟他成婚而不需要有任何顾忌。
- He makes no scruple to tell a lie.他说起谎来无所顾忌。
- Let me give you some history about a conundrum.让我给你们一些关于谜题的历史。
- Scientists had focused on two explanations to solve this conundrum.科学家已锁定两种解释来解开这个难题。