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Herb,
What an interesting discussion.
It seems to me that the deletion of the preposition in "couple of"
may stem from a further deletion of the schwa in the spoken "couple
a."
I don't have a problem with "couple" being used as both singular
and plural, as other posters have pointed out.
Isn' t "went missing" common in British English?
Thanks for the link to the Toyota
paper. It brings to mind the "I need you to move to the back of the
bus." that I frequently hear from (African-American) bus drivers.
David Brown
EFL/ESL teacher
Long Beach, CA
--- On Mon 09/25, Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
< [log in to unmask] > wrote:
From: Stahlke,
Herbert F.W. [mailto: [log in to unmask]]
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 22:16:09
-0400
Subject: Re: Two Questions
Christine.
I suspect the "a couple people" expression arose in speech through
the loss of schwa after the syllabic /l/ of "couple". The schwa
resulted from the reduction of "of", a very common phenomenon.
"Couple of", as a partitive is plural, just as "a pair
of" is, but "couple", like "pair", behaves also as a
singular noun.
I don't have a problem with "went missing". I think it's on the
model of "went flat", "went sour", etc., just using the present
participle as an adjective. There are, however, other patterns of verb plus
present participle, like "needs fixing". There's a paper in the
latest Lund University Working Papers in Linguistics, by Junichi Toyota, that
deals with the latter variety and touches briefly on other such
constructions. You can find it at
http://www.englund.lu.se/images/stories/pdf-files/workingspapers/vol06/Toyota_06.pdf
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
on behalf of Christine Gray
Sent: Mon 9/25/2006 8:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: Two Questions
Can anyone help me with these two questions from one of my students.
I replied that "couple" can be either singular or plural depending
on the
context and then gave her some examples. But the "couple of" I
don't know
about.
Also, I told her that "went missing" has always sounded awkward to
me. But
I hear it so frequently-is it correct?
See her questions below.
Thank you,
Christine Gray
Should we say, "a couple of people" or "a couple people?"
I'm never sure
whether or not to put in the "of."
And, couple is plural, right? "There are a couple of day! s when I can't
help
you."
Or is "a couple" singular? "There is a couple standing on the
corner."
Secondly,
I hear newscasters say "went missing." Is that correct? For
example,
Natalie Holloway in Aruba: news people say,
"She went missing last summer."
I'm making up that example, but I heard it again on TV a few days ago.
Thanks!
Diane
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