|
ESL Forum:
Techniques and methods
in Language Teaching
Games, activities
and teaching ideas
Grammar and
Linguistics
Teaching material
Concerning
worksheets
Concerning
powerpoints
Concerning online
exercises
Make suggestions,
report errors
Ask for help
Message board
|
ESL forum >
Grammar and Linguistics > clothes: count, non-count, or other???
clothes: count, non-count, or other???
|
frogladybug
|
clothes: count, non-count, or other???
|
So, it �s clear that "clothing" is non-count, but what about its synonym "clothes"?
You can say:
Your clothes are nice.
but not:
Your clothes is nice.
That makes it seem like it �s countable. But you can �t actually count it. For example, both of the following examples are incorrect:
I need to buy two clothes.
I just bought a beautiful new clothe(s).
It seems like maybe it �s the plural of "cloth", but that doesn �t make sense because "cloth" is just the material and "clothes" are a finished product.
So what �s the deal? Is there a new grammatical category called "plural only" and if so, what other nouns are in it? And what do you tell your students?
|
20 Dec 2009
|
|
|
|
Spagman63
|
Clothes would be collective clothing. Otherwise, we would just talk about the piece of clothing.
|
20 Dec 2009
|
|
|
Sara5
|
|
person is the singular of people
child is the singular of children |
20 Dec 2009
|
|
|
baiba
|
Jeans, scissors, customs, physics, means...
|
20 Dec 2009
|
|
|
redcamarocruiser
|
Clothes is non-count. It is a group noun. http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/agree2a.html
You can say the clothes hanging on the rack are discounted 50%.
= All the garments, all the pieces of clothing, all of the clothing
He is so nice he would give you the clothes off his back.
the clothing industry = the garment industry
|
20 Dec 2009
|
|
|
alien boy
|
originally �clothes � meant plural of �cloth � (but that goes way back to Old English), which meant cloth or garment. During the 19th century �cloths � was adopted to distinguish between multiple rags/cloths & multiple pieces of clothing.
Cheers,
AB
|
20 Dec 2009
|
|
|
arkel
|
|
news takes singular verb!! �The news is good. � |
20 Dec 2009
|
|
|
yanogator
|
|
"Physics" is singular. "Physics is a difficult science." |
29 Dec 2009
|
|
|
