Simple Grammar
Last week we began looking at the way grammar plays out when we want to say or write what is correct in English.
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We saw that whenever we use the word DID in a sentence, the verb that follows must be in the present tense because the past tense has been indicated by DID, as in:
Did she come as we expected?
We did not see her at the dinner.
The boys didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t notice her when I entered the hall.
Apart from questions and negative statements in the past tense, we can use DID in positive statements, especially as answers to questions.
For instance, to the question: Did you eat the food? we can answer in one of two forms:
i) I ate the food.
ii) I did eat the food.
While both answers are correct, the second one is more emphatic. We use did in this way to put emphasis on what we say, especially in situations where the aim is to show that we are sure of what we did!
For instance, if a person I know very well pretend that he or she had not seen me at a place where we had been, I could tell her: I did see you there!
In such a situation, I saw you there! will not be that emphatic.
Now, many people don’t seem to understand the grammar behind certain expressions in English.
For instance, while people know and accept the sentence: My mum and my dad like rice as correct because the verb like agrees with the plural subject my mum and my dad, these same people find it difficult to accept My mum as well as my dad likes rice as being correct too.
They think that since two persons have been referred to in both sentences, then the verb should be plural. But this is not the criterion for selecting a verb in English.
In the sentence: My mum and my dad ...., the two items mum and dad are joined by the conjunction and, which is the only conjunction that can join two singular items to make them plural.
That is why my mum and my dad is seen as plural, for which reason it must agree with a plural verb — like.
In the second sentence, the two items are joined by as well as (not and) and so the two can’t be taken as plural.
In this case, only the first item is taken as the subject, for which reason it must agree with a singular verb, likes.
Other examples are:
The boy, together with his friends, is going to the beach.
Jones, accompanied by his parents, has gone to the school.
Aba, along with her two siblings, wants to go on holidays.