Left, you could still say that the ATM only has twenty-dollar bills. You would say that the ATM has twenty-dollar bills (regardless of how I understand this is a challenging point of English grammar to learners of English.Īn ATM only carries Twenty-dollar bills. If he always brings a couple of fivers to work, you might say that. In other words, no you can't say your coworker "has five-dollar bills" to mean he has only one right now, because you are talking about what he has right now, not what he usually has. This is called syncretism, and we do not usually see it appear because most of the time when we talk about the present, we use the present progressive ("-ing") instead of the simple past. Some languages would disambiguate the two, but English does not. So as you can see, this is just the fact that the gnomic use of "to have" and the simple present use of "to have" is identical. To talk about what John has on his person right now, you would always use the simple present (note: * means that sentence is wrong): I don't know why, but it would be an interesting question. In the same vein, if you were talking about your coworker, you could say (both are gnomic):īut if you were talking about what John is doing right now, you use the present progressive:īut for some reason, "to have" doesn't behave this way. This is how come you can say "ATMs have five-dollar bills," (note: "ATM" not "The ATM") because, in general, they do. Now there are some things here that signal this is gnomic, namely that "rabbits" is neither definite (has "the") or indefinite ("a"), and it is plural, but note that the verb is just the same as if you were talking about rabbits racing a turtle and said: In English, we express the gnomic (and habitual) with what is known as the "simple present," "I go to school." This is not always the case in other languages. In other words, it describes things that generally happen, or that someone does regularly, that aren't limited to having happened, happening, or will be happening. Used to describe an aspect, the gnomic is considered neutral by not limiting the flow of time to any particular conception. This is a difference in aspect, specifically the gnomic aspect, defined by Wikipedia as. The effect of confusion in this case was desired, though, I can't seem to find the actual governing rule of grammar that covers this. why/why notįor clarity, I'm not looking for a work-around. if the bank were out of money except for a single dollar bill, could I still say that the back has one-dollar bills?. and more examples: A bank, has one-dollar bills, and five-dollar bills, etc. Is it valid to also say that he has five-dollar bills even when he is only carrying 1? Now, in both of his examples, I would say that those are valid. My coworker's argument is that one could not say that he has five-dollar bills but rather that he has 1 five-dollar bill or that he has five dollars. if the ATM only had one bill left, you could still say that the ATM only has twenty-dollar bills. You would say that the ATM has twenty-dollar bills (regardless of how many individual bills are in the ATM. My argument for the grammatical rules were this example:Īn ATM only carries Twenty-dollar bills. I jokingly made a snarky pun along the lines of, "So, you have five-dollar bills". My coworker stated that he had a five-dollar bill in his pocket.
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