Thursday December 20, 2007
It’s the little things
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED By FADZILAH AMIN
I HAVE doubts over an advertisement tagline that read, “It’s the little things at Watsons that make everyone love Christmas”.
1. Shouldn’t it be, “They are the little things at Watsons that make everyone loves Christmas”? (“They are” because “little things” is plural, and “everyone loves” because everyone is singular).
2. I would also think that the use of “that” refers to Watsons and not “little things”. I was taught that the subordinate conjunction “that” refers to the antecedent noun or pronoun. From the sentence, it would look like Watsons makes everyone love Christmas instead of the little things.
To correct this, I would think that the sentence should be rephrased as “They are the little things at Watsons making everyone love Christmas”.
– Paul Chan, Kuala Lumpur
“It’s the little things at Watsons that make everyone love Christmas.”
Let me explain how this sentence works. It is a correct sentence, but you have to understand a few things about its structure.
First of all, you have to understand that it is a cleft sentence, whose structure gives emphasis to a noun phrase. In this sentence, the noun phrase is “the little things at Watsons”. An impersonal or preparatory “it” is used as the subject of the main clause of such a sentence. This is followed by a “be” verb, which agrees with the subject. That is why the sentence begins with “It is” and not “They are”. The noun phrase to be emphasised acts as the complement of the verb.
This noun phrase is joined to the relative clause by the relative pronoun “that” which forms the subject of the relative clause. “That” stands for “the little things at Watsons”, and not “Watsons”. “Things” is the main word there, with the other words in the phrase qualifying it. Since it is plural, “that” is also considered plural and takes a plural verb, “make”.
“Make” is one of those verbs that can be followed by “object + base form of verb”. (Other such verbs are “let”, “hear”, “feel”, “see”, “help”, etc.) In the relative clause, the object is “everyone” and the verb following that is in its base form, i.e. “love” and not “loves”. So the structure here is “make” + “everyone” (object) + “love” (base form of verb).
Let me give you some examples of sentences of a similar structure. The words to be emphasised are in bold:
“It is their words of encouragement that help her continue with her studies.”
“It was these young children who saw the burglars break into the house.”
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Positions only for males?
THIS was in a Classifieds advertisement on Dec 8 (pic above). I know what it’s getting at but the use of the word “erection” made me laugh.Are the positions advertised only for males? Ha ha!
– Anselm, Petaling Jaya
Yes, the word “erection” has more than one meaning. In the advertisement, it obviously means “the act of building something or putting it in a vertical position.” (OALD) It is often used as a formal engineering and building term, as can be seen, for example, in the following web pages:
“We have just completed the erection of four dwellings in East Bristol that comprise 2-bedroom apartments, completed within budget and within time scale.”
http://www.projectmaintenance.co.uk/index.htm
This web page, http://www.steelerectionaz.com/index.html, even exploits the double meaning of the word as part of its advertising! I’ll spare other readers the details, but you can have a look.
When you begin with ‘one’
I REFER to the news item “Author to give tips on the write stuff” that appeared in The Star on Nov 26.It was reported therein that Fung said: “One must always know who he is writing for and why he is writing it.”
Shouldn’t what Fung said have been: “One must always know whom one is writing for and why one is writing it” to be grammatically correct?
– Kengt, Penang
I agree with you that if we begin a sentence with the indefinite personal pronoun “one”, we should continue to use this pronoun and not switch to another, like “he”, mid-sentence.
Also, since “one” is formal, the use of the object form “whom” is appropriate here. However, in current British English, “who” is often used informally as an object pronoun, e.g. in “Who are you waiting for?”
Rules for pronouncing ‘s’
ARE there any rules regarding the pronunciation of ‘s’ in the following words:present; does; desert; prison; closet – ‘s’ is pronounced with a ‘z’ sound?
listen; crescent – ‘s’ is pronounced with an ‘s’ sound?
– Rachel
Below are the pronunciations of present, does, desert, prison and closet respectively. Schwa (the sound in the first syllable of “about”) is indicated by an underlined ‘e’ (e), a long vowel is indicated by a colon (:) after it, and stress is indicated by an apostrophe before the stressed syllable:
/’preznt/ (noun) /pri’zent/ (verb) /daz/ /’dezet/ (noun) / /di’ze:t/ (verb) /’prizn/ /’klozit/
Generally, when ‘s’ comes between vowels as in /’dezet/ and /’klozit/ or before a nasal consonant (m, n or ng) as in /’preznt/ and /’prizn/, it is pronounced ‘z’.
This is also true if the ‘s’ comes after a voiced consonant (b, d, g or v), a nasal consonant or a vowel at the end of a noun or verb, as in “cubs” /kabz/, “beds” /bedz/, “legs” /legz/, “loves” /lavz/, “brims” /brimz/, “bans” /baenz/, “bangs” /baengz/, “does” /daz/, “has” /haez/ and “goes” /geuz/.
As for listen and crescent, generally, when an ‘s’ is followed by a silent ‘t’ or a silent ‘c’ or another ‘s’, the ‘s’ is pronounced ‘s’, as in “listen” /’lisn/, “crescent” /’kresnt/, “glisten” /’glisn/, “Christmas” /’krismes/, “ascend” /e’send/, “descend” /di’send/ and “blessed” /’blesid/ (adjective) or /blest/ (verb). There are, however, many exceptions to these “rules” (derived from common usage), e.g. “dessert” is pronounced with a ‘z’ and ‘crescent’ is sometimes pronounced with a ‘z’ in British English (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 2005). When in doubt, consult a dictionary that gives pronunciations of words.
Communication in plural
I KNOW that “communication” is uncountable. But why does it sometimes take a plural form with ‘s’?– Kinston Albert
“Communication” is an uncountable noun when it means “the act of communicating between people” (CALD), e.g. “They are in frequent communication with each other.”; “There is hardly any communication between the father and his children.”
“Communications” is used as a plural noun when it means the different methods of sending information or moving between places, e.g. “Mobile telephones and computers can now provide easy and fast communications between people and organisations worldwide.”; “Floods in the area have cut off its road and rail communications with the rest of the country.”
In very formal usage, “communication” is used as a countable noun, to mean a letter or a message, e.g. “This morning he received a highly confidential communication from the office of the Prime Minister.”
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