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:

    I have known a number of Don Juans who were good studs and who cavorted between the sheets without a psychiatrist to guide them. But most of the busy love-makers I knew were looking for masculinity rather than practicing it. They were fellows of dubious lust.
    Ben Hecht (1893–1964)

    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)

    The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.
    Milan Kundera (b. 1929)