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Mar 2022
9:26pm, 14 Mar 2022
24,963 posts
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Dvorak
I suggest you reply "smell". Or maybe "proprioception".
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Mar 2022
11:31pm, 14 Mar 2022
18,640 posts
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RichHL
"Good and evil."
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Mar 2022
2:25pm, 22 Mar 2022
21,605 posts
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ChrisHB
I have found an interesting case where it is normal to use 'a' with a plural:
I'm going away for a stress-free five days.
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Mar 2022
2:55pm, 22 Mar 2022
16,026 posts
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Cerrertonia
Interesting. I initially thought maybe it's because 'five days' is being treated as a singular noun, by analogy with say 'week' or 'fortnight'. However, it doesn't work without the 'stress-free' or some other adjective in there. I can't say "I'm going away for a five days".
I wonder whether it's to do with the ordering of adjectives in English (number before quality). I can say 'I'm going away for five stress-free days' but not "I'm going away for stress-free five days". The addition of an adjective (exciting, or stress-free or whatever) forces the 'five days' to behave like a singular noun, perhaps?
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Mar 2022
2:59pm, 22 Mar 2022
16,027 posts
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Cerrertonia
British English is, of course, quite irregular when it comes to treatment of collective nouns. For example:
Our team meets once per week. The team work well together.
Our staff meet once per week. The staff work well together.
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Mar 2022
2:59pm, 22 Mar 2022
85,103 posts
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swittle
If the words 'break of' were inserted after 'stress-free', there may be a case for those words being 'understood', so rescuing the 'a'.
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Mar 2022
3:07pm, 22 Mar 2022
16,028 posts
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Cerrertonia
Yes, it's an implicit 'five-day trip' or 'five-day break' or 'five-day holiday'. But I think it's the inclusion of an adjective before a number that does it. You have to put numbers before any adjectives describing qualities in an English noun-phrase. So when you have an adjective before a number, we decide that the number must be part of a noun - in this case a 'five-day'.
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Mar 2022
3:18pm, 22 Mar 2022
8,546 posts
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Northern Exile
I agree with Cerretonia, the "a" in that context is quantifying the singular entity of a holiday (or suchlike) rather than the five days.
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Mar 2022
7:00pm, 22 Mar 2022
21,608 posts
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ChrisHB
All this 'implicit' and 'implied' smacks to me of special pleading. No one saying or writing my sentence would think they're omitting a word or two, nor would they mostly notice the 'a' with a plural if the first nearly 70 years of my life are a fair example.
If I have to come up with a contrived explanation, I'd sooner suggest that 'a five days' exists in some circumstances just as 'a fortnight' exists without anyone thinking of 14.
I was looking at other languages and this example came up: Six years is a long time.
So maybe expressions of duration, even with a number, are singular.
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Mar 2022
7:46pm, 22 Mar 2022
85,110 posts
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swittle
^ '...nearly 70 years of my life are a fair example. .
Should the verb be singular?
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Discovering you've been pronouncing a word wrong all your life
Jul 2024