Six rules of Subject Verb agreement

There are a few of us who could use some quick lessons in the use of subject and verb in English.  You may have read a lot of rules and completed many sets of exercises to get them right, but here are six simple rules that will make it easy to comprehend and retain the lesson learnt.

Rule 1 - A singular subject uses a singular verb and a plural subject takes a plural verb.

How simple can it get?

Ex -The boy plays. ( Singular subject, singular verb)

The boys play. ( Plural subject, plural verb)

Rule 2 - When you use some or all in a sentence, the verb can be either singular or plural depending on whether the subject can be counted or not.

Ex-  Some of the chairs in the conference room are wobbly. ( You can count the chairs.)

Some of the tea from the teapot has spilt on the carpet. ( Tea is a non count subject.)

You can count tea if it were served in tea cups and thus if you say ” Six of the tea cups are cracked”, you will be right!

Rule 3 – When you use each, everyone, someone, anyone then the verb is always singular.

Each of you is responsible for the outcome.

Everyone in class has to have completed the exercise by Thursday.

Someone has to pick me up at the station tomorrow.

Rule 4 – When you use together with, along with or as well as even though they behave like conjunctions and link two phrases, the form of the verb will depend on the first subject.

If the first subject is singular, then the verb used is singular too.

The teacher ( First subject)along with the students ( Second subject) was at the marathon.

The students( first subject)together with the teacher( second subject) were at the celebrations after the marathon.

Rule 5 – When you use neither or either without the or and nor then the verb will always be singular. For ex -

Neither of the dresses she showed me was out of the world.

Will you prefer tea or coffee?

Either of them is ok.

Rule 6 - When neither or either is used in a sentence with the or and nor then the verb will always take the form of the second subject.

Neither Rajen nor his colleagues (second subject is plural) were at the meeting.

Either the engineers or Nair ( Second suject is singular) is representing the company at the conference.

The SODA quotient

The most common error that we tend to make as non native speakers of English are errors in sounds. Most of our vowels are clipped sounds – I know I said that in an earlier post, however, I am justified repeating it here because sound errors are the most commonly made errors and are the most difficult to correct. In consonants we make four kinds of errors – Substitutions, Omissions, Distortions and Additions. There! Now you know what I meant with that alluring title. I am not starting to doubt your understanding here, but I would like to explain each with a few examples -

Substitutions – Sometimes, we substitute a consonant sound with another from our regional language. A few examples – gut instead of good ( /t/ for /d/),people ( with the hard L ), money ( with the strong N) and many words that have the /s/ /z/ interchange – MuSic (for Muzic), LiZen ( for listen), proZEdure( for Procedure),perZon ( for Person), serviZes( for services) ExeGutive( for Executive)

Distortions – Sometimes the consonant sound is distorted and that changes the meaning of the word or can make you sound inaccurate. For example – AdminiSHter( for administer),proSHedure ( for procedure), deSHiSHions ( for decisions), Yelp ( for Help)

Omissions- Sometimes we omit sounds where they are required. For example, omitting the / h/ sound where required in words like how, home, however, had, home, half; omitting some sounds in the middle of the word in words like  / picture / which sounds like /pitcher/ etc.

Additions – A few errors are caused because we add an extra sound to words beginning with vowels. Example the sound /y / to words like earth and the sound / v/ to Only .Also sometimes a few of use tend to add a /H/ sound to words beginning with vowels,  like always, all, army, ask, achieve, advance, another, eighteen etc

There are other errors that we make with the /v/ and /w/ sounds which needs a seperate entry in the blog, so I will save it for another time.

The First Language Influence or the FLI

Many of us speak regional sounds in English. By regional sounds I mean, the sounds borrowed from the language that we speak as first language. It is a common misconception among students in India that our first language is English. Here is why – In schools, the medium of teaching is English. Schools offer “second language” that could be Hindi / Tamil / Malayalam/ Telugu/ Sanskrit/ Punjabi /Marati or Kannada depending on the region that we are from originally. So its common to assume that our first language is English. But what do we mean by First language? Its the language that your mother spoke to you when you were a babe in arms. It is the language that your family speaks as ” mother tongue”. It is the language that you think in or use easily when you need to convey your thoughts.

The point I want to make here is, when we speak English, we borrow not only the intonation and the rhythm pattern of our first language but also most of the sounds. It is easy to recognize someone from a particular region just based on the sound errors he/ she makes. Typically, we speak all consonant sounds harder than they have to be spoken and we “clip” all the vowel sounds. These sound errors make us sound Indian or heavily accented with regional sounds.

That is what we mean by the first language influence in English or FLI.

Direct vs Reported Speech

Another area that needs correction is the way we use Direct speech when we report something. For example -

She told me, I will follow you, you go ahead, when I asked her to the cafeteria.

In most regional languages of India, we use the direct speech even when we report it to someone. Think back in your first language – which should be easy, because that is exactly what we do when we frame sentences in English! The corrected sentence should be this -

She told me she would follow me and asked me to go ahead when I asked her to the cafeteria.

Here is what I found on about.com, which gives you the rules, lesson plans, quizzes which focuses on using the reported speech in conversation.

http://esl.about.com/b/2008/09/05/tell-others-what-she-said.htm

Fillers – Don’t use them

We tend to use ‘filler’ words in our way of speech when we grope in our minds for a right word or when we run out of ideas or we generally don’t know what to say. Fillers are dis-fluencies that make our language less intelligent. Some examples of typical filler words are -

Basically, I am from Chennai.
The word basically is a filler in the current context. Displace basically and replace it with ‘Originally’, if you have to use it.

If you ask me my opinion, I mean, I have to tell you, I mean, I do not believe in life after death.

I hope you understood why in the above context ‘ I mean ‘ qualifies as a filler.

I hope you know, you know, that tomorrow is a holiday, you know, because of Diwali, you know.

( Alright, I probably over did the ‘ you know‘, you know, but now you know! )

Like, when you are tempted to, like, use a filler next time, remember, like, its not so cool to do that!

Simple vs Continuous

Indians are poor communicators. We speak in long drawn sentences which affects the ‘punch’ of what we want to say. When we have to use the simple tense, we use the continuous.The ‘quality’ of our communication, therefore, suffers.

Look at these sentences.
Are you getting a message?
What I am expecting is…

The present continuous tense is to be replaced with the simple present tense.
So the sentence then becomes -

Do you get a message?
What I expect is..

The next time you are tempted to use the continuous tense, remember to KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid:-)