What to do with ‘3rd person singular’? Why this learner-unfriendly idiosyncracy should be ignored in ELF-compatible curricula

The '3rd person singular' present tense verb form (hereafter '3rd person singular') is one of the most notorious ‘errors’ in the English output of EFL speakers, advanced learners included. It tops the list of five lexico-grammatical ‘sins’ in the VOICE corpus which have been shown to have minimal impact on ELF communication (Jenkins, Modiano and Seidlhofer 2001: 16), in that ELF speakers tend to use “the same verb form for all present tense verbs, as in ‘you look very sad’ and ‘he look very sad” (Jenkins 2003: 131; emphasis added). Over two decades ago, a very similar observation was made in Platt, Weber and Ho’s (1984) study of grammatical features across different varieties of New Englishes, where the marking of '3rd person singular' was found to be limited, as in ‘She drink milk” (The Philippines) and ‘Every microcosm consist of many cells’ (India; cited in Jenkins 2003: 26). As is well-known, in Standard English varieties, “[t]he 3rd person singular form occurs with a 3rd person singular subject..., and the plain present tense form occurs with any other kind of subject” (Huddleston and Pullum 2006: 31; see Table 1).Table 1: Present tense verb forms in Standard English varieties Subject 1st person 2nd person 3rd person One person I walk you walk s/he walks More than one person we walk you walk they walk'3rd person singular' is thus the marked present tense form (e.g. walks), as opposed to the unmarked ‘plain form’ (e.g. walk). What is it that makes '3rd person singular' so resistant to EFL speakers’ learning efforts? This paper discusses one illogicality in Standard English varieties, namely, the use of the same suffix ‘-s’ (and its allomorphs, hereafter ‘-s’) to mark two diametrically opposed grammatical meanings or redundancies: on one hand, ‘-s’ is used to signify ‘more than one’ in plural nouns, as opposed to ‘one only’ in singular nouns. In all standard varieties of English, this contrast constitutes the grammatical category ‘number’ for all count nouns. On the other hand, the same suffix ‘-s’ is required for signaling the complex meaning ‘one and only one, 3rd person’. '3rd person singular', being grammatically opposed to the ‘plain form’ (i.e. with ‘zero marking’), thus partakes of two grammatical categories for present tense verbs: ‘number’ and ‘person’. With regard to the category ‘number’, the two grammatical meanings assigned to ‘-s’ (‘more than one’ vs. ‘one and only one’) are incompatible with each other and, as such, mutually exclusive. This is conceivably a main source of confusion as well as a primary reason for EFL learners’ learning difficulties and relative underachievement. For EFL learners whose L1 morphology does not make a clear distinction between different word classes, as in Chinese, disentangling the two confusing grammatical meanings associated with ‘-s’ is understandably a challenging cognitive hurdle to overcome (especially the distinction between nouns and verbs such as success vs. succeed). What implications does the above discussion have on the teaching and use of '3rd person singular' in EFL settings? In English curricula worldwide, the grammatical meaning of ‘-s’ as a ‘plural marker’ is usually introduced earlier than '3rd person singular'. By the time the learner has accustomed to marking a plural noun with ‘-s’, the grammatical requirement to mark '3rd person singular' present tense verbs with the same suffix ‘-s’ arguably entails the temporary suspension, if not de-learning, of its plural-marking function for nouns. From the point of view of semantics and sound symbolism, the addition of a suffix ‘-s’ is in harmony with the grammatical meaning ‘more than one’ for nouns (consider, e.g., the contrast between a car, two cars; one flower, many flowers, etc.). To the extent that the plural marking function of ‘-s’ is semantically motivated, mastering this function is relatively straightforward. The same cannot be said of the function assigned to '3rd person singular': whereas the zero-marked plain form agrees with any subject, including ‘more than one (3rd) person’ (Table 1), the suffix ‘-s’ signifies ‘one and only one (3rd) person’. As a grammatical redundancy, '3rd person singular' is considerably more opaque than the ‘plural marker’. Given that the non-use of '3rd person singular' has been shown to have minimal impact on ELF communication, such a deviation from Standard English varieties in EFL speakers’ verbal output should stop being seen as an error; rather, zero-marked verb forms following '3rd person singular' subjects should be promoted as an acceptable variant in the teaching and assessment of speaking skills in EFL settings (see Table 2).Table 2: Present tense verb forms proposed for ELF-compatible curricula Subject 1st person 2nd person 3rd person One person I walk you walk s/he walk / walks More than one person we walk you walk they walkIn longer terms, by the time such a variant has taken hold in the majority of EFL speakers, the battle for its legitimate status will have been won, with codification in ELF-compatible curricula being a logical sequel to this EFL development.