A guy on the Summer of Code asked about the following.
Linux rocks, FreeBSD rocks – but Linux and FreeBSD rock.
Which is correct use of rock verse rocks but I have no idea why. Suck also works like this,
Windows sucks, MacOS X sucks – but Windows and MacOS X suck.
This just proves that I know nothing about this language I use every day. Could a linguist please explain this?
{ 4 } Comments
I’m not sure it needs explaining per se… That’s just how habitual verbs work. They get an ‘s’ with a singular subject, and no suffix with a plural subject. (In fact, it more likely drops the ‘s’ for a plural subject, but the actual difference is buried somewhere in an exercise book in my cupboard)
He squeegles, she squeegles, we all squeegle for ice cream!
I think the mental dissonance you’re suffering is because rock is also a noun, and you want your singular noun to not have an ‘s’ and your plural noun to have an ‘s’.
(I have a vauge recollection that there’s another class of English verbs that doesn’t do this, but I can’t for the life of me remember. This vauge recollection is pointing me towards strong VS weak verbs…)
Yeah nothing to explain, that’s just the conjugation of verbs in English.
I jump, you jump, he jumps, she jumps, it jumps, we jump, they jump.
Why does he/she/it add an ‘s’ on the end of the word, while I and you don’t? What logical reason is there for it (as it obviously has nothing to do with pluralization. Normally we add “s” (or “es”) to pluralize a noun, there must be more going on here.
If you find something logical out, let me know, as far as I am concerned it is just an arbitrary rule.