Number agreement of subjects and complements

Question

Hello, Today's question is about number agreement of subjects and complements. So, can I say "they are a doctor", "They all have their house" and "it's your decisions", and so on. When is it okay to break the rule of number agreement of subjects and complements? Thanks a million in advance to all.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

You need to think about which choice makes the meaning more clear and sounds more reasonable.
'It's your decisions' gives everyone spoken to multiple decisions. 'They are a doctor' sounds silly.

BillJ · Answer

Kwang Hee HanHello, Today's question is about number agreement of subjects and complements. So, can I say "they are a doctor", "They all have their house" and "it's your decisions", and so on. When is it okay to break the rule of number agreement of subjects and complements?

It's not really about breaking rules. In the case of predicative complements with "be", they often have subject-complement number agreement, but there are numerous perfectly grammatical cases where they do not.

1. *They are a doctor. 2. It's your decisions.

1. is straightforwardly ungrammatical because of incompatibilty between subject and complement.The incompatibilty results from identifying a subject comprising two or more people, with a complement comprising only one doctor. 2. is different because it is not to do with subject-complement agreement, but an example of "it" as a meaningless dummy pronoun with no semantic number. That can be seen in examples like It is one week/two weeks old; It is one mile/five miles away. So, depending on context, 2. may mean the decisions (plural) of one person, or more than one person.

Now look at these perfectly grammatical examples with "be" where there is no agreement of number:

1. Our neighbours are a nuisance. 2. The only thing we need now is new curtains.

Example 1. has a plural subject but a singular complement. Here, the verb "be" has an ascriptive meaning, but the mismatch is acceptable because the property of being a nuisance is non-distributive, i.e. it relates to our neighbours as a whole, rather than individually. By contrast, 2. is an example of specifying "be" where the subject is singular and the predicative complement is plural. Both kinds of mismatch are perfectly grammatical and very common. Here are two more acceptable mismatches; in the first example "be" is ascriptive with a non-distributive complement; in the second "be" is specifying:

These results are something to be proud of.
The main asset of the team is its world-class opening bowlers.

In the case of direct objects as complements, as in your second example, things are much simpler because there is no requirement for subject-complement number agreement:

They (all) have their house. ~ They (all) have their houses.
They own a car ~ He owns cars.
They love their dog. ~ He loves their dogs.

BillJ

Hans51 · Answer

Thanks for the awesome explanation to Mister Micawber and BillJ all the time!!

Number agreement of subjects and complements

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions