Job Discussion Forums

[basiltherat]

i cant seem to get my head round a particular use of 'is and 'are'

--How much is a tea ? (tea=uncountable so why 'a')
--Two coffees, please. (coffee=uncountable so why ___s)

OK, I got that ! What we mean is a cup of tea or two cups of coffee so it changes to countable. No probs there.

But ......I cant get my head around this one:

'How much is a strawberry pie and a coffee ?' Why 'is' ? Why not 'are' ?

You go to the shops and buy countless items and go to the cashier and say:

'How much is that ?' Why 'is that' ? Why not 'are these/those' ?

Maybe its late in the week and I'm just not seeing it. Anyone help ? thanks loads
best
basil

PS Can't access grammar book here. Someone lost the key to cupboard. Great ! So im kinda relying on you guys to lend a helping hand.
again. thnx loads

[teacheringreece]

I'd say it's because you're paying for everything together you're treating them as a whole. The "it" could be understood as "the collection of items I've selected" or "my shopping", both singular. It's more a conceptual point than a grammatical one.

[dmb]

How much is that?
the total?
referring to money?
uncountable.

[teacheringreece]

Transvaal - I'll try to leave aside your obvious lack of common courtesy, politeness and basic communication skills in dealing with my reply and turn instead towards your own explanation.

It is in fact your response to my idea of "conception" that is actually ludicrous. The support you offer for your own argument is that certain nouns referring to groups of things are singular, while others are plural. This is very true, and in fact some nouns of this kind can be both singular and plural (e.g. government, family, band). But this gets us absolutely nowhere as the original sentence, "How much is a strawberry pie and a coffee" contains two nouns, and this is why the use of the singular is perhaps confusing. Your example sentences are in no way analogous.

My own point about conception is that in the question, clearly the speaker is treating the items to bought as a whole, because they are going to be paid for as a whole, and hence a singular form of the verb is used. It has nothing to do with the grammatical properties of the individual nouns.

Now onto something else you mention. Why is the sentence "How much does it cost to buy a strawberry pie and a coffee?" "further evidence as you say"? Again, you are trying to apply an example that is completely irrelevant. The sentence you introduce contains what in linguistics is called an expletive, which here takes the form of the word "it". An expletive is simply a grammatical phenomenon that occurs in non null-subject languages (i.e. languages that do not allow subjects to be left out in certain circumstances without a sentence becoming ungrammatical). The "does" why you concentrate on in "How much does it cost" is dependent on the expletive "it", which in itself has no meaning, and it is ludicrous to suggest that it is somehow connected to the "strawberry pie and coffee" in the example. Similar examples of expletives are found in "It's raining.", "It seems...", yet you can't use these structures to support an argument that rain is singular, or that the thing that is apparent (in the phrase "It seems") is singular!

I look forward to your ideas in response, but do hope that you can present them in a more respectful and constructive way.

[Guy Courchesne]

Reminds me of something...

[teacheringreece]

In the version of this that I heard the heckler was a well-known philosopher, who was at the time a first-year undergraduate at a logic lecture. His response was "Yeah, yeah". It's a great story though!

[basiltherat]

Thanks tons for your perspectives on this. I see that others are having problems with this. At least I'm not alone - thank God.
Thanks again. Great stuff.

[web fishing]

[Stephen Jones]

There is another discussion on subject/berb agreement in English here
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=3762&sid=06da7194bc4f9c170879255472092602
I don't wish to repeat what I said but in the case of this sentence:
'How much is a strawberry pie and a coffee ?
there is a mismatch between two types of agreement, "grammatical agreement" and proximal agreement.
"Grammatical" agreement says that the verb should agree in number with the subject, which in this case is the plural noun phrase 'a strawberry pie and a coffee."
Proximal agreement says the verb should agree with the number of the noun next to it, which in this case is the singular 'a strawberry pie'.
In most English sentences proximal and "grammatical" agreement are the same, but here they are not, and thus there is disagreement as to which decides.

[teacheringreece]

Isn't it more likely here to be a case of "notional agreement"? That the subject is, as you say in the other discussion, "considered as an amorphous collectivity"? This would also explain the sentence "How much is that?" when referring to a whole load of items sitting at the till? Perhaps the OP's two examples illustrate both notional and proximal agreement.

I'd say this "notional agreement" is exactly the same as what I referred to as conception - that the items are treated as a whole, and hence take a singular form.

[Stephen Jones]

We would always say How much are two strawberry pies and a coffee?' even though the items are treated in the same way as How much is a strawberry pie and a coffee?', so proximal agreement is what decides here.

In 'How much is it/that?' we are referring to the bill, not the individual items.

You are correct about 'notional agreement' and your terminology of 'conception' being the same thing.

[Don McChesney]

How much is a strawberry pie, (comma) and a coffee? Much relates to money.

[Stephen Jones]

The comma is quite wrong here. The phrase "a strawberry pie and a coffee" is the subject of the sentence and you are asking for the combined price of both of them; if a comma intruded, it could only be interpreted as that you are asking first for the price of a strawberry pie, and then, separately, for the price of a coffee.

[dmb]

Do you think the waiter would notice the comma(or lack of comma) or not?

[web fishing]