Korean Job Discussion Forums

poet13 · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:23 pm Post subject: Grammar question....help please.

I confused myself this morning.

I presented this question to my third year middle school boys.

"What does your family like to do in their free time?"

I said "DOES" because family is third person singular. But then I thought, "I'm also using third person plural "THEIR" in the sentence and so it doesn't make sense." I thought about it some more and figured that we assume that the members of a family are plural and we can't very well refer to a human family as "IT".

For that reason this feels awkward...."What does your family like to do on its' vacation?"

So I've rationalized it by how it feels rolling off the tongue, but without any basis in grammar.

Anyone care to sort me out?

Thanks.

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004

Corporate entities can take either singular or plural. You can say either 'ManU are going to win nothing next year' or 'ManU is going to win nothing next year'. In American English, however, the use of the singular for a corporate entity is most common.

I had this same discussion with a co-teacher this week over:

Q: How many members does Big Bang have?
A: They have five members.

This is a level of language that's so common to a native speaker that I don't even have to think about the grammar. But to a Korean it's extremely perplexing. 'members does / how many does' sounds wrong. But 'Big Bang does' is fine because it can function as a singular or plural entity. 'How many members do Big Bang have' would make more sense to a Korean, but, while grammatically acceptable, that's not how an American would likely say it.

poet13 · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:43 pm Post subject:

So what you're saying is that I opened a....

Cerriowen · Joined: 03 Jun 2006 Location: Pocheon

You assume that a family is composed of more than one person.

Typically if you only have only one family member, you don't refer to them as your "family", you call them by their title... My mom, My dad, My sister...

Family is like "deer".

Where do the deer live?
Where does the deer live?

Where does your mother go on her vacation?
Where does your family go on their vacation?
Where does his family go on it's vacation?

poet13 · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:51 pm Post subject:

So you're saying they are all correct?

wings · Joined: 09 Nov 2006

yawarakaijin · Joined: 08 Aug 2006

SirFink · Joined: 05 Mar 2006

poet13 · Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:37 pm Post subject:

...but wouldn't you say fishes if you were referring to different species?
My wife says she will get some fruit, and I say please get some different fruits...