0

I had a question regarding MLK's speech "I have a dream", and the following quote more especially:

I have a dream that my four little children will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

My question is, since he has four children, why not use the plural here ? Would it be possible, as in "the colour(s) of their car(s) ? And if that's so, where would the "s" be, would it be at the end of "colour/content" or "skin/character" ? If not, why ?

Improve this question
6
  • Possible, but awkward. This is one of the most famous speeches ever given—something to learn from, rather than critique.
    – Xanne
    Commented May 13 at 6:58
  • People have only one skin but may have more than one car. So, the singular is certainly justifiable. The grammatical topic is called the distributive plural. Here is a discussion of it that you may find useful: english.stackexchange.com/questions/301625/…
    – Shoe
    Commented May 13 at 9:07
  • There are lots of existing questions here about heads and bodies, as well as cars and phones, so this is probably a duplicate.
    – Stuart F
    Commented May 13 at 15:27
  • All the children have skin of the same color. Since there's only one skin color, it's singular.
    – Barmar
    Commented May 13 at 19:18
  • But even if he were talking about children of different races, he's talking about color and skin as general concepts, which makes them non-countable.
    – Barmar
    Commented May 13 at 19:20

0

Reset to default

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.