Is czy Are?

Witam:)

Mam małe pytanie i prośbe odnośnie takiego zdania :

What we are looking for (is / are) these people.
I czy tam ma być is czy are ?

Tak samo w zdaniu :
What I want to find (is/are) three pencils.

Bardzo możliwe, że coś mi się pomylilo. Tylko,że pamiętam że istniała taka konstrukcja w której dawało się w drugiej części zdania IS nawet jeśli później była liczba mnoga.

is

poczekaj na kogos to poda Ci obszerniejsze wyjasnienie :)

Is

What we are looking for IS these people.
CZEGO/CO szukam - TO jest tych ludzi (tłumaczenie wyjaśniające)
Szukam tych ludzi (tłumaczenie)

Pytanie o podmiot

What I want to find IS three pencils.
CO chcę znaleźć TO trzy ołówki
Chcę znaleźć trzy ołówki.

Pytanie o podmiot

W pytaniach zaczynających się od "what" w drugiej części zdania jakby odpowiadamy na pytanie CO chcemy znaleźć/CZEGO szukamy

konstrukcja wygląda tak:

CO .... TO ...
CZEGO .... TEGO/TO ...

To follow the above explanation:

>>What we are looking for (is / are) these people.
>>What I want to find (is/are) three pencils.

Correct me if I’m wrong ,'gals 'n' fellas' :)haha.., but this is a perfect example of ‘psuedo wh-clefts’ ( as opposed to ‘th’ and ‘it’ clefts) where the first part , ‘wh-phrase’ ,takes a subject position and being quote,‘normally a nominal relative clause’, unquote , at the same time.

It is linked with its focused complement by the verb BE , here ‘these people’ and ‘three pencils’ are the noun phrases and their plurality has no bearing on the form of the verb BE.

We can also extrapose the wh-part accordingly :

‘It is these people what we are looking for’, but ‘ These ARE the people (what,-not that)we are looking for.
‘It is three pounds what I want to find’ , but ‘ Three pounds IS what I want to find’.

Well,I guess I muddled the asker rather than helped.If so, forgive me please.:)

p.s. At least you know now why it is ‘IS’ there and not ‘ARE’.

>'It is these people what we are looking for', but ' These ARE the
>people (what,-not that)we are looking for.
>'It is three pounds what I want to find' , but ' Three pounds IS what
>I want to find'.

there's something wrong with the two sentences, I'm afraid to say

prosze o pomoc napiszcie mi tooo! prosze

Spędziłeś/-aś wakacje w uroczym pensjonacie na południu Anglii. Po powrocie do domu zorientowałeś/-aś się, że zostawiłeś/-aś w po­koju torbę. Napisz list do kierownika pensjonatu.
- Wyraź zadowolenie z pobytu w pensjonacie i podziękuj za miłą obsługę.
- Podaj powód, dla którego piszesz i poproś o pomoc.
- Napisz, jak wyglądała torba i w którym miejscu najprawdopodobniej ją zostawiłeś/-aś.
- Wyraź nadzieję, że torba nie zginęła i kierownik będzie mógł Ci pomóc.

To co oczekujesz nie nazywa sie 'pomoc' - oczekujesz calkowicie czegos innego, ale ze wstydu nawet nie wiesz jak to sie nazywa i jak o to prosic.
Zrob sam/a, wtedy poprawimy.
Nie oczekuj ze ktos tutaj z forum (nauczyciele i wykladowcy) ma Ci odrobic zadania domowe. Wstyd nawet o czyms takim pomyslec.

przepraszam, napisz o sprawdzisz?

znaczy ja napisz o Ty spr? ; )
kiepska jestem z ang nie wiem jak zdam mature w maju ;/

Ja wiem ze nie zdasz. Szkoda nawet na to czasu.
A co wlasciwie robilas kiedy mialas sie uczyc?
Wiecej interesujace rzeczy? - NO PAIN NO GAIN.

Co do mojego pytania, dziekuje za odpowiedzi :)

You're 'afraid to say' but don't be afraid to elaborate :)
We can parse them together to see what might be wrong with them.

>>'It is these people THAT/WHO (not what) we are looking for', but ' These ARE
>the
>>people (what,-not that)we are looking for.
>>'It is three pounds THAT (not what) I want to find' , but ' Three pounds IS
>what
>>I want to find'.

I guess?

Ok, but the original is wh-left not it-cleft. To CZEGO ( nie 'kogo' konktretnie) szukamy to włąsnie ci ludize. But "three pounds" indeed may ask for "that".
Cf :
'What she is looking for is mushrooms'.
'Mushrooms are what she is looking for'.
'It's mushrooms that(what ?) she is looking for.'

reading again my previous post, I realised the wrong way I had put my words in it - it should go like this: There's something wrong with the two INITIAL sentences.

but pakk appears to be able to read between the lines, and my mind, obviously o_O

sav, I know that 'what' in those two initial sentences is present in British English, but regarded as non-standard

Some interesting reading on THAT/WHO following "people"
1.
http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/people-that-need-people-i-a-history-of-thatwho/
2.
http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/people-that-need-people-ii-the-subject-object-distinction/

I was already begining to worry it's something more serious, haha ...
May be that's why they're called psuedo-clefts, by the way :)

Anyway,to dot the i's and cross the t's :
In the reversed wh-cleft( or pseudo if you like ) 'what' doesn't have to necessarily be left out. ( not to confuse with the reversed it-cleft)

*n

wiem, ze nikt juz tego nie dotrzymuje...ale WHOM a nie 'who'.

Yes, I've read the similar article somewhere.
It's funny, I guess the author used "that" sarcastically as in "against the grammarians, that fought .."

Indeed, but it's not used very often in spontaneous spoken language and you know it, you nice-legged blondie teacher-twinkie :)

> May be that's

sav, I believe it's about time someone like me pointed this out to you - 'may' and 'be' are written as separate words when used predicatively; when used at adverbial position, they're written as one word, 'maybe', got it?

incidentally, your increasing ability to use technical grammar terms means a lot to me - you're improving yourself on English grammar, I guess

Oh yes, of course. Thank you.

>>>to use technical grammar terms means a lot to me

Ale wiesz sam że to nic nie znaczy Engee, to wszytko zostaje w głowie jak przeczytasz, i to dobrze oczywiście, to na pewno rozwija umysł,jakby nie patrzyć.

Bardziej mnie interesuje "produkcja logicznego myślenie na żywo" że tak powiem.
Może inaczej - intelektualna improwizacja językowa która jest potrzebna na pewnym etapie, dobrze ująłem czy nie ?:)Ludzie we własnym języku kneblują się a przecież są begli..( nie mylić z biegłością i bogatym lub mniej słownictwem i trafnością semantyczną, to samo przez się rozumie na samym początku)
To tak jak w muzyce. Pianista gra najpierw utwór z nut. Później improwizuje, ma tylko 14 dostępny dżwięków, prawda.. Chyba nie bardzo trafne porównanie ..:)

Na pewno wiesz o co chodzi, przecież jesteś stary wyjadacz ( czy młody :))))
Ja młody , haha

>and you know it,...
I use it all the time. Your compliments will not get you off the hook, you bad boy.

..'former bad boy', I hasten to add.
Unfortunately, I've already done my moral rehab. Gone are the days when your humble learner used to get his hooks into the all built-meat around. Well, in fact, I wanted to butter you up a little bit. Women needs to be 'pet' and 'podlizywane' occasionally. I'm sorry if I went too far with 'podlizywane'. Please don't confuse it with a decent mustache-ride. Or, do.. :)

cut *s

As a punishment for my both linguistic sloppiness and ignorance, and just for the sake of the historical evolution of ‘may be, some may find the following petrified and obsolete utterances entertaining :
If we had lived in Medieval England, during the reighn of Henry II, we might have heard the next usage of maybe, jumbled in both the predicative and attributive manner, I guess :

1.“This, MAY BE, was the reason some imagin’d Hell there.” (quote 1661 Glanvill Van. Dogm. 1661) - meant adverbially, used predicatively ?

2.“Impossible ! it can’t be me. Or MAY BE I mistook the word. ( SWIFT, Apol.Wks.1775 IV I.209) - same as the above ?

3.“Our Lord speaking quite simply to simple Syrian people, a child or two MAYBE at his knees.”( THACKERY Lett.28 July) - used attributevly but meant and should be understood assertively as an active auxiliary verb [be]’?

4.“The Oxford English Dictionary describes ‘maybe’ as archaic and dialectal. But within the last generation it has been reinstated in England, obviously as a result of its popularity in the American vocabulary, where ‘perhaps’ is a very rare bird. Yet all this time ‘maybe’( or ‘mebbe’) has been thriving in northern England, Scotland and Ireland. ( New Society 29 Aug.305/1, 1968 )