Talk:Plural Instead of Singular

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Revision as of 01:53, 11 August 2015

The First Day of the Day

In Sickly Sam's Big Outing, The Homestar Runner tells Sickly Sam, "Today's the first day of the day of your big outing." Does this belong on this page? Because "the first day (implying there are more days counted) of the day (implying that there aren't any more days counted)". It seems like that merits a remark somewhere, but i'm not sure where. The Knights Who Say Ni 00:05, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

50 bag of golds

It's both a plural instead of singular and a singular instead of plural. Is it also a spoonerism? --BroncoTroll^☺ 09:01, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

It could technically be thought of one, but as only one sound gets moved, it's not really one as such. — Defender1031*Talk 13:48, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Regarding this revert

You seem to have missed my point. I have no problem with the pluralized version of verbs or adjectives appearing in the main list. My only issue was that "he likes" is the proper way to say it, so I reworded it to keep the "I likes" phrasing. "All" is never used with an s, whether or not something is plural or singular, so that doesn't belong here at all, which is why I removed it originally. I also removed the kids' book entry, as that's an instance of Singular Instead of Plural. — Defender1031*Talk 13:44, 9 August 2015 (UTC) How is it singular instead of plural? A: Wear is a verb. B: The sentence should be "some people wear glasses". --BroncoTroll^☺ 16:00, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Also, you didn't explain why you deleted the "variations" section. --BroncoTroll^☺ 16:01, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Wait, I get it. It's from "Some people wear" to "he/she wears". But that's a variation, since it's not a noun. --BroncoTroll^☺ 16:10, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

If it's a noun we're talking about, it's not "wears" that is singular. It's "some people" that is plural. --BroncoTroll^☺ 16:13, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

In fact, an easier way to understand it is that the singular of "people" is person, and it should be "some person wears glasses". --BroncoTroll^☺ 16:32, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

It's the word "wears" which is breaking the pattern, not "people". — Defender1031*Talk 17:10, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

As for the section stuff, in general, we don't section off articles unless there's some compelling reason. In this case, whether it's the noun itself or a modifier (verb, adjective, etc.) applied to the noun, it's still following the same pattern of using incorrect pluralization. Adding sections to articles unnecessarily makes them clunky and hard to follow. — Defender1031*Talk 17:19, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Lets get to the syntactical gist of this.

The other examples are wrong for two reasons:

1. the article/adjective doesn't agree with the noun, ie "50 bag"

2. because of convention it shouldn't be made plural, ie "my underwears".

You think you think that what "breaks the sentence" in these cases is the nouns and not their modifiers, although technically "1 bag" would also be correct. But rightly, what is bolded for the list is the noun, because this article is about nouns agreeing with their modifiers, not modifiers agreeing with their nouns. The one thing these examples have in common is that the noun is the problem. Yes, for most another thing could be changed without touching the noun, but it's better to have one reference point- the noun- instead of bouncing between reference points, because if that were the case almost all of these examples should be on the other page in reverse.

The sentence "Some people wears glasses" is obviously incorrect because the subject and verb don't agree. But a verb can't be plural or singular, only a subject can. An exact counterpart to this article would be "singular verbs with plural subjects", but like I said, that would be switching reference points. And word order alone doesn't make it convenient.

The two corrections to the sentence:

1. "Some person wears glasses"

2. "Some people wear glasses"

Both are correct. SVOA is a two way street.

If you accept that verbs modifying plural subjects when they should be modifying singular ones counts on this page, then surely the opposite is true and this should be listed on both pages. Or, we could put the onus of SVO-agreement on the noun directly, "Some person wears glasses". That's more straight forward. We'll get to the other variations later, what's different about them is that when something starts with "I" it has a singular subject, so it agrees with "likes" numerically. The only problem is the "s" which is in he/she tense instead of "I".

What I'm saying is:

We should definitely make a precedent of putting the onus of agreement on the noun, since the noun is a consistent reference point.

And we should figure out what to do with the examples where a plural or singular noun isn't the issue, and it's just SVOA. --BroncoTroll^☺ 01:09, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Also, where does "times" fit in? There are examples on its page not listed here where times should be singular and not plural. --BroncoTroll^☺ 01:19, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I definitely hear what you're saying about standardizing based on the noun. However, up until now, the standardization for that entry goes on which page has been based on which possible correct variation of the sentence best fits in the context in which it's being said. For example, in kids' book, since every other page in the book is "some people do X", clearly it's the "wears" which is the out of place word, rather than the "people" (as changing it to "some person wears glasses" would not fit in context). Shifting from "what actually fits" to "always go by the noun" would certainly keep the grammar more consistent, but I fear it would make the joke get lost on a cognitive level. As for "times", not every instance is an instance of plural instead of singular. — Defender1031*Talk 08:28, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! I do recognize that for that specific example, but I don't think the joke would get lost. And I recognized that with times on the page, not all the examples are used incorrectly as much as they are used unusually. Like "that whole times" is obviously wrong.

I don't think the joke would get lost. This page is about a word running gag. You have to balance the word with the gag. --BroncoTroll^☺ 09:07, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Peoples

As you know, people can be a singular word, ie a people, or the plural of persons. The perfectly valid plural of singular people is persons. How do we know when it' s being used correctly? --BroncoTroll^☺ 01:33, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

And how the **** do we know whether "todays" is being used correctly? It's the correct plural form of today. But in that case "closed todays" would mean "closed all days", so I guess we'll assume its incorrect? --BroncoTroll^☺ 01:37, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

And what about "the times"? Unlike "this whole times", where "this" is singular and times is plural, the isn't singular or plural. So it may not disagree. Like, "Do you know the colonial times?" --BroncoTroll^☺ 01:44, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

The thing I deleted because it has nothing to do with singular or plural but subject verb agreement : *Email caffeine — Strong Bad tells Justin "I likes the sound of your town".

• Email the bet — In an easter egg commercial for butter-da, the King of Town says "they tell me not to, but I still drinks it!"

This could make its own page, there are lots more examples. --BroncoTroll^☺ 01:46, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm overanalyzing things. No one says "todays", anyway. Anyway, my earlier bit about Subject verb agreement still stands. --BroncoTroll^☺ 07:58, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

This one is more iffy. On the one hand, subject-verb agreement is the pattern, meaning, like in the other examples, if instead of being "I", the subject were "he", then it would be grammatically correct. On the other hand, both "I" and "he" are singular. Nothing is being pluralized. I think I'm fine with these being removed, although before you do so, perhaps we should more fully explore the idea that the common factor to both Singular Instead of Plural and Plural Instead of Singular are Subject-Verb issues. (Perhaps we should think about creating some combined page about SVA stuff with separate sections for PIoS, SIoP, and generic SVA...) — Defender1031*Talk 09:19, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes!!!!!! Great idea. --BroncoTroll^☺ 09:24, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Will talk atcha later. I'm guessing it's like normal time b'tzion but here it's freakin early. --BroncoTroll^☺ 09:27, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm home! Anyway, I'm not sure where plural words that have been made plural would fit in this. A different page, maybe? It's not SVO, it's just... convention. But yeah. I'm not sure exactly how this in general fits into the general category of Subject verb object disagreement, but all of them are examples of grammatical number disagreement. Perhaps that could be a page including both PIos and SIoP. I'm not sure if it's possible to squeeze it into an article with the "wears" example, considering that it's not really a case of singular instead of plural, since "I wears" is incorrect. It's subject verb agreement. You could make it all a page "Poor Grammar", but that's too broad, Clanky. --BroncoTroll^☺ 01:38, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Now there are a few examples which I think follow a bit of a different pattern, which might be notable. In this case the noun agrees with its immediate proceeding grammatical number but it's wrong anyway, for whatever reason. I think it's because they are all compound words. Like 3-day-old bread. (I made that one up). You don't say "3 days"

• Main Page 15 — Strong Bad says "It looks like it was done by a two-years-old boy."
• Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 11.2 — Homestar Runner, doing a crossword, asks Marzipan for "a four-letters-
• Email couch patch — One of Strong Bad's rejected Compy commands is to "um, this time really print me out a milliondollars bill.nofoolin'"word for censoring a cuss word".
• Email dangeresque 3 — Homestar Runner as Dangeresque, Too suggests to ask "passers-by" Strong Sad.
• Email boring (really) — Coach Z says that "Jorb" is a four-letters word.
• Email bottom 10 — Nibbles states that he is "one years old."
• Strong Badia the Free — After Strong Bad puts all the Homsartifacts in the pylon and talks to Homsar in Homsar language, Homsar says, "Why are you talking gibberish? You sound like a two years old boy!"

Then there are some which don't have an identifiable grammatical number but are wrong because you really never use the plural of the word in that context.

• Email animal — Homestar Runner says "I say there, Monstrosity! Do you know the times?"
• Thy Dungeonman 3 — the sign at the sandwich shop says "Closed Todays".

So... yeah. I think our best bet is to make a separate article for subject-verb agreement, and put "wears" on both pages. --BroncoTroll^☺ 01:53, 11 August 2015 (UTC) Two years is correct agreement, but two-years-old is incorrect.