Re: Nouns, person, and gender.

From: Ronald Ross (rross@cariari.ucr.ac.cr)
Date: Tue Dec 23 1997 - 12:10:27 EST


Jonathan, one thing I would certainly change is the idea that the (subject)
noun agrees with the verb. It is the verb that agrees with the subject.

Nouns don't have person morphologically expressed, but they certainly function
as third persons, and therefore the verb would agree in the third person. In
some languages, such as Spanish, subject nouns can in fact function as first
and second persons when plural. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to
discover that Greek allows this too, though I don't have any examples to prove
it.

As for a btter way to say it, maybe like this:

When a noun or pronoun is the subject, it is in the nominative case. The verb
agrees with it in person and number.

Ron Ross

Jonathan Robie wrote:

> Here is a statement I made in one of my lessons:
>
> "When a noun is a subject, it appears in the nominative, and agrees with
> the verb in person and number, just as pronouns do."
>
> That isn't quite right, since nouns do not have person. If you replace a
> noun with a pronoun, though, the pronoun does have person, and the verb
> would agree with the person of that pronoun.
>
> Is there a better way to say this?
>
> Jonathan
> ___________________________________________________________________________
>
> Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com
>
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