Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[BMO]

1. Entire houses were taken off their foundation and just disappeared.
Foundation or foundations and why?

2. Together they caused dozens of deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

Damage or damages and why?

Thanks again.

[cgage]

Foundations agrees with houses.
Damage. Damage is plural. Example: there was a lot of damage.

Damages is a legal term often used in court. Example: The accused settled for damages out of court. It can refer to physical or monetary loss.
You couldn't say, "the hurricaine caused lots of damages"

[BMO]

[bud]

1. Correct!

2. In general, yes... You might see the plural outside of a legal context, but I can't think of any examples where the singular wouldn't work just as well. And as cgage has noted, it is wrong in the given example, so you might as well keep it singular in order to avoid misuse.

[BMO]

Thanks a lot.

[advoca]

There may have been many houses but each house has only one foundation, and each of the many houses was taken off its foundation.

There was a collective damage (which is an uncountable noun). There was a lot of damage and this damage cost billions of dollars. There was damage, and a lot of damage, but not lots of damages.

[BMO]

Thanks. It is very clear now. Are there websites on non-countable nouns?

[advoca]

Try http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/esl/eslcount2.html

This is a very helpful and useful web page

[advoca]

Countable and Uncountable Nouns

Countable nouns are the names of separate objects, people, ideas etc which can be counted.,

a cat a newspaper a soldier an airplane

two cats three newspapers five soldiers two airplanes

Uncountable nouns are the names of materials. liquids, abstract qualities, collections and other things that we see as masses without clear boundaries and not as separate objects.

water lightning thunder poetry progress rubbish
rice traffic work publicity luck luggage
furniture, baggage money news accommodation
weather bread chess grass chewing gum
advice equipment information knowledge progress

You cannot have two waters, three rices, four furnitures, two weathers, and so on.

Notice that there are problems with certain words. For example, some uncountable nouns are plural and have no singular with the same meaning. For example, groceries. there is no such noun as grocery And you cannot buy one trouser, or one pyjama, or one scissor.

[BMO]

Thanks a lot, I need to study a little bit more; it is confusing.

[LucentShade]

That "foundations" thing is where English differs from other languages in the use of plurals. Spanish, for instance, would say "The men took off their hat," since each man has only one hat. (I know the literal translation of "Los hombres se quitaron el sombrero" is a little different, but I'm focusing on the plural here.) In English, in these "each element has one" sentences, the plural needs to be used. "We found our cars" means that each of "us" found a separate car, but "We found our car" means that all of us went to the same car. The plural in the first sentence indicates that each of us has a car, not that we all own more than one car. In the same way, "The houses were ripped from their foundations" does not mean that the houses had more than one foundation each.

[BMO]

Thanks. So it is "The men took off their hats."