a eng. question

hinchun34

A number of tickets is/are (reserve)for students.
(passive voice)can u give me a reason?thx

hinchun34

Originally posted by secret at 2005-3-23 10:48 PM:

I think my presentation is not good enough....so I can't explain this clearly to him........
By the way,I hve never heard about anything that you are talking about(beacause I am F.1 only...),can ...

do you know? although u are F.1,your eng. is better than me(why?you know la!!!)

secret

Originally posted by oscar at 2005-3-23 10:44 PM:
唉...香港人既水平越來越低....
都係個死人李x章搞C掍

I think my presentation is not good enough....so I can't explain this clearly to him........
By the way,I hve never heard about anything that you are talking about(beacause I am F.1 only...),can you teach me?Thanks.

hinchun34

Originally posted by oscar at 2005-3-23 10:44 PM:
唉...香港人既水平越來越低....
都係個死人李x章搞C掍

you are correct! but i am just F.2.this question is in my test.

oscar

唉...香港人既水平越來越低....
都係個死人李x章搞C掍

hinchun34

Originally posted by oscar at 2005-3-23 10:32 PM:

你不要理會是什麼A，你只要記住A number of一定要用plural verbs

ok i know now thx a lot! u improve me a lot of problems!thx,oscar![E-Hap]

oscar

Originally posted by hinchun34 at 2005-3-23 22:30:

why 'a number of' is plural and it is 'A'. how about 'a group of' it is used in 'is'
or my eng. is bad.

你不要理會是什麼A，你只要記住A number of一定要用plural verbs

oscar

Originally posted by hinchun34 at 2005-3-23 22:19:

but why some teachers and F.6,7 told me the answer is 'is'. and a note said that if we use on this case, we will use 'is'.

那麼你相信老師及大同學，還是相信一個英文系的老教授呢？

hinchun34

Originally posted by oscar at 2005-3-23 10:26 PM:

Collective nouns contain at least two meanings.
Like 'family', it can be treated as a whole family and different family members.
e.g. My family is on a picnic.(Family here means the whole famil ...

why 'a number of' is plural and it is 'A'. how about 'a group of' it is used in 'is'
or my eng. is bad.

oscar

Originally posted by hinchun34 at 2005-3-23 22:19:

you are correct. but have you learned 'collective nouns'. A number of tickets
although 'tickets' is not single, a number of is the main word.'A' of cource is a article, 'A' is single, so it is ' ...

Collective nouns contain at least two meanings.
Like 'family', it can be treated as a whole family and different family members.
e.g. My family is on a picnic.(Family here means the whole family.)
      My family are all professionals.(Family here means every family members.)
In your case 'A number of tickets', this phrase is not a collective noun.
Also, in a normal case, plural verb should be followed by "A number of (plural noun)".