English: High School 704
If you are to use English as an educated person, you must be familiar with correct usage. In this lesson, you will review subject-verb agreement with subjects, with special attention given to compound subjects. As you have learned in previous units, every sentence must have at least one subject and one verb.The subject and the verb must work together in a logical way.There must be agreement. Subject. The subject of a sentence is a noun (the name of a person, place, thing, or idea) or a pronoun that is the doer in the sentence. Example:John hit the ball. Who hit the ball? John. He is the doer. John is the subject. The subject can be plural (more than one). Example:Mary and Diane are listening to music. Mary and Diane are the doers. They are the subjects of the sentence. Example:The children are eating lunch. The children are the doers. They are the subject. Verb. The verb in a sentence can be one or more words. The verb tells what the doer is doing. Example:John hit the ball. What did John do to the ball? He hit it. Hit is the verb. Another example: John can run faster than Bill. What can John do faster than Bill? John can run. There can be two or more verbs in a sentence. Example:John can run faster and jump higher than Bill. A verb will either show action or being. Verbs such as is, are, was, were, and will be show being. If the subject of a sentence is singular (one), we use is or was. Examples:He is nice.He was nice. If the subject of sentence is plural, we use are or were. Examples:They are nice.They were nice.
As of 2016, 400 million people spoke English as their first language, and 1.1 billion spoke it as a secondary language.[66] English is the largest language by number of speakers. English is spoken by communities on every continent and on islands in all the major oceans.[67] The countries where English is spoken can be grouped into different categories according to how English is used in each country. The "inner circle"[68] countries with many native speakers of English share an international standard of written English and jointly influence speech norms for English around the world. English does not belong to just one country, and it does not belong solely to descendants of English settlers. English is an official language of countries populated by few descendants of native speakers of English. It has also become by far the most important language of international communication when people who share no native language meet anywhere in the world. Three circles of English-speaking countries Braj Kachru distinguishes countries where English is spoken with a three circles model.[68] In his model, the "inner circle" countries have large communities of native speakers of English, "outer circle" countries have small communities of native speakers of English but widespread use of English as a second language in education or broadcasting or for local official purposes, and "expanding circle" countries are countries where many people learn English as a foreign language. Kachru bases his model on the history of how English spread in different countries, how users acquire English, and the range of uses English has in each country. The three circles change membership over time.[69] Braj Kachru's Three Circles of English Countries with large communities of native speakers of English (the inner circle) include Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, where the majority speaks English, and South Africa, where a significant minority speaks English. The countries with the most native English speakers are, in descending order, the United States (at least 231 million),[70] the United Kingdom (60 million),[71][72][73] Canada (19 million),[74] Australia (at least 17 million),[75] South Africa (4.8 million),[76] Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million).[77] In these countries, children of native speakers learn English from their parents, and local people who speak other languages and new immigrants learn English to communicate in their neighbourhoods and workplaces.[78] The inner-circle countries provide the base from which English spreads to other countries in the world.[69] Estimates of the numbers of second language and foreign-language English speakers vary greatly from 470 million to more than 1 billion, depending on how proficiency is defined.[17] Linguist David Crystal estimates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.[79] In Kachru's three-circles model, the "outer circle" countries are countries such as the Philippines,[80] Jamaica,[81] India, Pakistan,[82] Malaysia and Nigeria[83][84] with a much smaller proportion of native speakers of English but much use of English as a second language for education, government, or domestic business, and its routine use for school instruction and official interactions with the government.[85] Those countries have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to a more standard version of English. They have many more speakers of English who acquire English as they grow up through day-to-day use and listening to broadcasting, especially if they attend schools where English is the medium of instruction. Varieties of English learned by non-native speakers born to English-speaking parents may be influenced, especially in their grammar, by the other languages spoken by those learners.[78] Most of those varieties of English include words little used by native speakers of English in the inner-circle countries,[78] and they may show grammatical and phonological differences from inner-circle varieties as well. The standard English of the inner-circle countries is often taken as a norm for use of English in the outer-circle countries.[78] In the three-circles model, countries such as Poland, China, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Egypt, and other countries where English is taught as a foreign language, make up the "expanding circle".[86] The distinctions between English as a first language, as a second language, and as a foreign language are often debatable and may change in particular countries over time.[85] For example, in the Netherlands and some other countries of Europe, knowledge of English as a second language is nearly universal, with over 80 percent of the population able to use it,[87] and thus English is routinely used to communicate with foreigners and often in higher education. In these countries, although English is not used for government business, its widespread use puts them at the boundary between the "outer circle" and "expanding circle". English is unusual among world languages in how many of its users are not native speakers but speakers of English as a second or foreign language.[88] Many users of English in the expanding circle use it to communicate with other people from the expanding circle, so that interaction with native speakers of English plays no part in their decision to use English.[89] Non-native varieties of English are widely used for international communication, and speakers of one such variety often encounter features of other varieties.[90] Very often today a conversation in English anywhere in the world may include no native speakers of English at all, even while including speakers from several different countries.[91] Pluricentric English Pie chart showing the percentage of native English speakers living in "inner circle" English-speaking countries. Native speakers are now substantially outnumbered worldwide by second-language speakers of English (not counted in this chart). US (64.3%) UK (16.7%) Canada (5.3%) Australia (4.7%) South Africa (1.3%) Ireland (1.1%) New Zealand (1%) Other (5.6%) English is a pluricentric language, which means that no one national authority sets the standard for use of the language.[92][93][94][95] But English is not a divided language,[96] despite a long-standing joke originally attributed to George Bernard Shaw that the United Kingdom and the United States are "two countries separated by a common language".[97] Spoken English, for example English used in broadcasting, generally follows national pronunciation standards that are also established by custom rather than by regulation. International broadcasters are usually identifiable as coming from one country rather than another through their accents,[98] but newsreader scripts are also composed largely in international standard written English. The norms of standard written English are maintained purely by the consensus of educated English-speakers around the world, without any oversight by any government or international organisation.[99] American listeners generally readily understand most British broadcasting, and British listeners readily understand most American broadcasting. Most English speakers around the world can understand radio programmes, television programmes, and films from many parts of the English-speaking world.[100] Both standard and non-standard varieties of English can include both formal or informal styles, distinguished by word choice and syntax and use both technical and non-technical registers.[101] The settlement history of the English-speaking inner circle countries outside Britain helped level dialect distinctions and produce koineised forms of English in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.[102] The majority of immigrants to the United States without British ancestry rapidly adopted English after arrival. Now the majority of the United States population are monolingual English speakers,[70][103] and English has been given official or co-official status by 30 of the 50 state governments, as well as all five territorial governments of the US, though there has never been an official language at the federal level.[104][105] English as a global language Main article: English as a lingua franca See also: Foreign language influences in English and Study of global communication English has ceased to be an "English language" in the sense of belonging only to people who are ethnically English.[106][107] Use of English is growing country-by-country internally and for international communication. Most people learn English for practical rather than ideological reasons.[108] Many speakers of English in Africa have become part of an "Afro-Saxon" language community that unites Africans from different countries.[109] As decolonisation proceeded throughout the British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s, former colonies often did not reject English but rather continued to use it as independent countries setting their own language policies.[55][56][110] For example, the view of the English language among many Indians has gone from associating it with colonialism to associating it with economic progress, and English continues to be an official language of India.[111] English is also widely used in media and literature, and the number of English language books published annually in India is the third largest in the world after the US and UK.[112] However English is rarely spoken as a first language, numbering only around a couple hundred-thousand people, and less than 5% of the population speak fluent English in India.[113][114] David Crystal claimed in 2004 that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in the world,[115] but the number of English speakers in India is very uncertain, with most scholars concluding that the United States still has more speakers of English than India.[116] Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca,[58][117] is also regarded as the first world language.[118][119] English is the world's most widely used language in newspaper publishing, book publishing, international telecommunications, scientific publishing, international trade, mass entertainment, and diplomacy.[119] English is, by international treaty, the basis for the required controlled natural languages[120] Seaspeak and Airspeak, used as international languages of seafaring[121] and aviation.[122] English used to have parity with French and German in scientific research, but now it dominates that field.[123] It achieved parity with French as a language of diplomacy at the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919.[124] By the time of the foundation of the United Nations at the end of World War II, English had become pre-eminent[125] and is now the main worldwide language of diplomacy and international relations.[126] It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.[127] Many other worldwide international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee, specify English as a working language or official language of the organisation. Many regional international organisations such as the European Free Trade Association, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),[59] and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) set English as their organisation's sole working language even though most members are not countries with a majority of native English speakers. While the European Union (EU) allows member states to designate any of the national languages as an official language of the Union, in practice English is the main working language of EU organisations.[128] Although in most countries English is not an official language, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language.[58][59] In the countries of the EU, English is the most widely spoken foreign language in nineteen of the twenty-five member states where it is not an official language (that is, the countries other than Ireland and Malta). In a 2012 official Eurobarometer poll (conducted when the UK was still a member of the EU), 38 percent of the EU respondents outside the countries where English is an official language said they could speak English well enough to have a conversation in that language. The next most commonly mentioned foreign language, French (which is the most widely known foreign language in the UK and Ireland), could be used in conversation by 12 percent of respondents.[129] A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of occupations and professions such as medicine[130] and computing. English has become so important in scientific publishing that more than 80 percent of all scientific journal articles indexed by Chemical Abstracts in 1998 were written in English, as were 90 percent of all articles in natural science publications by 1996 and 82 percent of articles in humanities publications by 1995.[131] International communities such as international business people may use English as an auxiliary language, with an emphasis on vocabulary suitable for their domain of interest. This has led some scholars to develop the study of English as an auxiliary language. The trademarked Globish uses a relatively small subset of English vocabulary (about 1500 words, designed to represent the highest use in international business English) in combination with the standard English grammar.[132] Other examples include Simple English. The increased use of the English language globally has had an effect on other languages, leading to some English words being assimilated into the vocabularies of other languages. This influence of English has led to concerns about language death,[133] and to claims of linguistic imperialism,[134] and has provoked resistance to the spread of English; however the number of speakers continues to increase because many people around the world think that English provides them with opportunities for better employment and improved lives.[135] Although some scholars[who?] mention a possibility of future divergence of English dialects into mutually unintelligible languages, most think a more likely outcome is that English will continue to function as a koineised language in which the standard form unifies speakers from around the world.[136] English is used as the language for wider communication in countries around the world.[137] Thus English has grown in worldwide use much more than any constructed language proposed as an international auxiliary language, including Esperanto.[138][139]
The phonetics and phonology of the English language differ from one dialect to another, usually without interfering with mutual communication. Phonological variation affects the inventory of phonemes (i.e. speech sounds that distinguish meaning), and phonetic variation consists in differences in pronunciation of the phonemes. [140] This overview mainly describes the standard pronunciations of the United Kingdom and the United States: Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA). (See § Dialects, accents, and varieties, below.) The phonetic symbols used below are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).[141][142][143]
Fortis obstruents, such as /p tʃ s/ are pronounced with more muscular tension and breath force than lenis consonants, such as /b dʒ z/, and are always voiceless. Lenis consonants are partly voiced at the beginning and end of utterances, and fully voiced between vowels. Fortis stops such as /p/ have additional articulatory or acoustic features in most dialects: they are aspirated [pʰ] when they occur alone at the beginning of a stressed syllable, often unaspirated in other cases, and often unreleased [p̚] or pre-glottalised [ʔp] at the end of a syllable. In a single-syllable word, a vowel before a fortis stop is shortened: thus nip has a noticeably shorter vowel (phonetically, but not phonemically) than nib [nɪˑb̥] (see below).[146] lenis stops: bin [b̥ɪˑn], about [əˈbaʊt], nib [nɪˑb̥] fortis stops: pin [pʰɪn]; spin [spɪn]; happy [ˈhæpi]; nip [nɪp̚] or [nɪʔp] In RP, the lateral approximant /l/, has two main allophones (pronunciation variants): the clear or plain [l], as in light, and the dark or velarised [ɫ], as in full.[147] GA has dark l in most cases.[148] clear l: RP light [laɪt] dark l: RP and GA full [fʊɫ], GA light [ɫaɪt] All sonorants (liquids /l, r/ and nasals /m, n, ŋ/) devoice when following a voiceless obstruent, and they are syllabic when following a consonant at the end of a word.[149] voiceless sonorants: clay [kl̥eɪ̯]; snow RP [sn̥əʊ̯], GA [sn̥oʊ̯] syllabic sonorants: paddle [ˈpad.l̩], button [ˈbʌt.n̩]
As is typical of an Indo-European language, English follows accusative morphosyntactic alignment. Unlike other Indo-European languages though, English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system in favor of analytic constructions. Only the personal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class. English distinguishes at least seven major word classes: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, determiners (including articles), prepositions, and conjunctions. Some analyses add pronouns as a class separate from nouns, and subdivide conjunctions into subordinators and coordinators, and add the class of interjections.[174] English also has a rich set of auxiliary verbs, such as have and do, expressing the categories of mood and aspect. Questions are marked by do-support, wh-movement (fronting of question words beginning with wh-) and word order inversion with some verbs.[175] Some traits typical of Germanic languages persist in English, such as the distinction between irregularly inflected strong stems inflected through ablaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem, as in the pairs speak/spoke and foot/feet) and weak stems inflected through affixation (such as love/loved, hand/hands).[176] Vestiges of the case and gender system are found in the pronoun system (he/him, who/whom) and in the inflection of the copula verb to be.[176] The seven word-classes are exemplified in this sample sentence:[177] Thechairmanofthecommitteeandtheloquaciouspoliticianclashedviolentlywhenthemeetingstarted.Det.NounPrep.Det.NounConj.Det.Adj.NounVerbAdvb.Conj.Det.NounVerb Nouns and noun phrases English nouns are only inflected for number and possession. New nouns can be formed through derivation or compounding. They are semantically divided into proper nouns (names) and common nouns. Common nouns are in turn divided into concrete and abstract nouns, and grammatically into count nouns and mass nouns.[178] Most count nouns are inflected for plural number through the use of the plural suffix -s, but a few nouns have irregular plural forms. Mass nouns can only be pluralised through the use of a count noun classifier, e.g. one loaf of bread, two loaves of bread.[179] Regular plural formation: Singular: cat, dog Plural: cats, dogs Irregular plural formation: Singular: man, woman, foot, fish, ox, knife, mouse Plural: men, women, feet, fish, oxen, knives, mice Possession can be expressed either by the possessive enclitic -s (also traditionally called a genitive suffix), or by the preposition of. Historically the -s possessive has been used for animate nouns, whereas the of possessive has been reserved for inanimate nouns. Today this distinction is less clear, and many speakers use -s also with inanimates. Orthographically the possessive -s is separated from the noun root with an apostrophe.[175] Possessive constructions: With -s: The woman's husband's child With of: The child of the husband of the woman Nouns can form noun phrases (NPs) where they are the syntactic head of the words that depend on them such as determiners, quantifiers, conjunctions or adjectives.[180] Noun phrases can be short, such as the man, composed only of a determiner and a noun. They can also include modifiers such as adjectives (e.g. red, tall, all) and specifiers such as determiners (e.g. the, that). But they can also tie together several nouns into a single long NP, using conjunctions such as and, or prepositions such as with, e.g. the tall man with the long red trousers and his skinny wife with the spectacles (this NP uses conjunctions, prepositions, specifiers, and modifiers). Regardless of length, an NP functions as a syntactic unit.[175] For example, the possessive enclitic can, in cases which do not lead to ambiguity, follow the entire noun phrase, as in The President of India's wife, where the enclitic follows India and not President. The class of determiners is used to specify the noun they precede in terms of definiteness, where the marks a definite noun and a or an an indefinite one. A definite noun is assumed by the speaker to be already known by the interlocutor, whereas an indefinite noun is not specified as being previously known. Quantifiers, which include one, many, some and all, are used to specify the noun in terms of quantity or number. The noun must agree with the number of the determiner, e.g. one man (sg.) but all men (pl.). Determiners are the first constituents in a noun phrase.[181] Adjectives Adjectives modify a noun by providing additional information about their referents. In English, adjectives come before the nouns they modify and after determiners.[182] In Modern English, adjectives are not inflected, and they do not agree in form with the noun they modify, as adjectives in most other Indo-European languages do. For example, in the phrases the slender boy, and many slender girls, the adjective slender does not change form to agree with either the number or gender of the noun. Some adjectives are inflected for degree of comparison, with the positive degree unmarked, the suffix -er marking the comparative, and -est marking the superlative: a small boy, the boy is smaller than the girl, that boy is the smallest. Some adjectives have irregular comparative and superlative forms, such as good, better, and best. Other adjectives have comparatives formed by periphrastic constructions, with the adverb more marking the comparative, and most marking the superlative: happier or more happy, the happiest or most happy.[183] There is some variation among speakers regarding which adjectives use inflected or periphrastic comparison, and some studies have shown a tendency for the periphrastic forms to become more common at the expense of the inflected form.[184] Pronouns, case, and person English pronouns conserve many traits of case and gender inflection. The personal pronouns retain a difference between subjective and objective case in most persons (I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them) as well as a gender and animateness distinction in the third person singular (distinguishing he/she/it). The subjective case corresponds to the Old English nominative case, and the objective case is used both in the sense of the previous accusative case (in the role of patient, or direct object of a transitive verb), and in the sense of the Old English dative case (in the role of a recipient or indirect object of a transitive verb).[185][186] Subjective case is used when the pronoun is the subject of a finite clause, and otherwise, the objective case is used.[187] While grammarians such as Henry Sweet[188] and Otto Jespersen[189] noted that the English cases did not correspond to the traditional Latin-based system, some contemporary grammars, for example Huddleston & Pullum (2002), retain traditional labels for the cases, calling them nominative and accusative cases respectively. Possessive pronouns exist in dependent and independent forms; the dependent form functions as a determiner specifying a noun (as in my chair), while the independent form can stand alone as if it were a noun (e.g. the chair is mine).[190] The English system of grammatical person no longer has a distinction between formal and informal pronouns of address (the old 2nd person singular familiar pronoun thou acquired a pejorative or inferior tinge of meaning and was abandoned), and the forms for 2nd person plural and singular are identical except in the reflexive form. Some dialects have introduced innovative 2nd person plural pronouns such as y'all found in Southern American English and African American (Vernacular) English or youse found in Australian English and ye in Hiberno-English. English personal pronounsPersonSubjective caseObjective caseDependent possessiveIndependent possessiveReflexive1st p. sg.Imemyminemyself2nd p. sg.youyouyouryoursyourself3rd p. sg.he/she/ithim/her/ithis/her/itshis/hers/itshimself/herself/itself1st p. pl.weusouroursourselves2nd p. pl.youyouyouryoursyourselves3rd p. pl.theythemtheirtheirsthemselves Pronouns are used to refer to entities deictically or anaphorically. A deictic pronoun points to some person or object by identifying it relative to the speech situation—for example, the pronoun I identifies the speaker, and the pronoun you, the addressee. Anaphoric pronouns such as that refer back to an entity already mentioned or assumed by the speaker to be known by the audience, for example in the sentence I already told you that. The reflexive pronouns are used when the oblique argument is identical to the subject of a phrase (e.g. "he sent it to himself" or "she braced herself for impact").[191] Prepositions Prepositional phrases (PP) are phrases composed of a preposition and one or more nouns, e.g. with the dog, for my friend, to school, in England.[192] Prepositions have a wide range of uses in English. They are used to describe movement, place, and other relations between different entities, but they also have many syntactic uses such as introducing complement clauses and oblique arguments of verbs.[192] For example, in the phrase I gave it to him, the preposition to marks the recipient, or Indirect Object of the verb to give. Traditionally words were only considered prepositions if they governed the case of the noun they preceded, for example causing the pronouns to use the objective rather than subjective form, "with her", "to me", "for us". But some contemporary grammars such as that of Huddleston & Pullum (2002:598-600) no longer consider government of case to be the defining feature of the class of prepositions, rather defining prepositions as words that can function as the heads of prepositional phrases. Verbs and verb phrases English verbs are inflected for tense and aspect and marked for agreement with present-tense third-person singular subject. Only the copula verb to be is still inflected for agreement with the plural and first and second person subjects.[183] Auxiliary verbs such as have and be are paired with verbs in the infinitive, past, or progressive forms. They form complex tenses, aspects, and moods. Auxiliary verbs differ from other verbs in that they can be followed by the negation, and in that they can occur as the first constituent in a question sentence.[193][194] Most verbs have six inflectional forms. The primary forms are a plain present, a third-person singular present, and a preterite (past) form. The secondary forms are a plain form used for the infinitive, a gerund-participle and a past participle.[195] The copula verb to be is the only verb to retain some of its original conjugation, and takes different inflectional forms depending on the subject. The first-person present-tense form is am, the third person singular form is is, and the form are is used in the second-person singular and all three plurals. The only verb past participle is been and its gerund-participle is being.
Yes + Identification * Harris