Subject-Verb Agreement

Question

Why are the "feeling" verbs such as: like, hate, envy etc... plural when the singular pronoun subject is I and singular when the singular subject pronoun is she or he? For example:

I envy her.

She envies me.

Answer 1

Hi Jamie,

This may not be what you meant, but actually, verbs don't have singular or plural forms--since they communicate actions or states of being, they aren't things, like nouns and pronouns. Sure, I know I just used "they" to refer to verbs, but the word verb is a noun, and so, it does have singular and plural forms. That doesn't mean verbs don't change when paired with singular or plural nouns (or pronouns). This concept is called conjugation--basically, how verbs change depending on the subject they're paired with. For regular verbs, eg "walk," it works sorta opposite of pluralization:

The dog walks.

The dogs walk.

I know, I still haven't answered your question, but we're almost there: conjugation isn't affected just by singular or plural status of the noun-to-verb pairing, but also by whether its the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person: the easiest way to think of these criteria is by the associated personal pronouns, in their form as subjects::

1st: I, we

2nd: you, you (all)

3rd: he, she, it, they (can be singular for gender non-binary people, traditionally plural)

Note that there are plural and singular forms for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person pronouns. For regular verbs

I walk, we walk

You walk, you (all) walk

He/she/it/they walk, they walk.

Fortunately,conjugation is pretty easy in English. It's only the 3rd person singular conjugation that changes for regular verbs in the simple present tense, and we just add that "s."

In short, then, the answer to your question--if I understand it correctly--has nothing to do with feeling verbs, and not even with pluralization, but rather, conjugation by person.

I envy, we envy

You envy, you (all) envy

He/she/it envies, they envy.

I hope this helps!

Evan