Quebec French Syntax - Number

Number

On the other hand, many Quebecers in informal context will decide on the agreement with collective nouns based on semantics rather than morphology. That is to say, for instance, that a verb whose grammatical subject is le monde (people, folks) may appear in the 3rd person plural because le monde designates multiple people although it is singular: le monde là-dedans sont en train de chiâler (the people in there are complaining).

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Famous quotes containing the word number:

    Among a hundred windows shining
    dully in the vast side
    of greater-than-palace number such-and-such
    one burns
    these several years, each night
    as if the room within were aflame.
    Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

    A child’s self-image is more like a scrapbook than a single snapshot. As the child matures, the number and variety of images in that scrapbook may be far more important than any individual picture pasted inside it.
    Lawrence Kutner (20th century)

    In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)