Word Order Subject Verb Agreement

Subject-verb-object languages almost always place relative clauses after the nouns they modify, and adverbial subordinations before changing the clause, with varieties of Chinese being notable exceptions. A composite subject has two or more simple topics that are usually related by and or or. Collective names are words that refer to a group of people, such as: team, committee, family, company. In general, we treat collective nouns as a singular to highlight the individual group, or in the plural to emphasize its individual members. (Note that some authors of American English regularly treat collective nouns as singular.) If the composite subject is after the predicate, expressed as “there is; there is” (there was; there was, etc.), the verb usually corresponds to the next subject in number. Physics has always been a difficult subject for me. 5. In questions where the word wh is the subject, both English and Swedish have a normal word sequence (SVO). Moreover, when we say that the verb predicate is always in second place in a declarative main sentence in a V2 language, we actually mean that the finite verb of the verb predicate is in second place. A few examples might be helpful. In question (23), there is no other good candidate for the position of subject than the initial word Wh, who (i.e.

who or whose possible speaker(s) is the one who wants). Since the word Wh, which is the subject, there is no reversal. Phrases such as “ten students; six books; five of them” as subjects take on a pluralverb. The number at the beginning of the sentence is always written. If necessary, restructure your sentence to avoid using the number at the beginning. Partial inversion is sometimes called “question word order” because it is the typical word order of questions in English. It is used in all yes/no questions (at least when we analyze questions like Are You Here? as a case of partial reversal, although this is somewhat problematic). If you want to convey the plural meaning of these collective nouns, it is often better to add the word “members” when appropriate. For example: family members; family members; members of the Committee; committee members; Employees; team members; Crew members.

If the subject is expressed by an indefinite pronoun (e.B. everyone, someone), the gender is not known, but it is quite possible that both male and female people are included. The masculine pronoun “to be” has traditionally been used in language and writing in such cases: everyone has their own opinion. Swedish is also an SV(O) language, that is, the normal (or unmarked) order between the elements of the main sentence is that the subject precedes the verb and the verb precedes all objects and predictions (e.B. Kalle har en båt `Kalle a un bateau`). . . .