grammar一問...高手入黎...

Only a handful still live in their villages.

I have a different opinion :

I agree that a handful = more than one

But in this sentence the subject is “a handful” which is a third person singular, we understand that “a handful” is more than one, but in this sentence the word “handful” is a quantifying noun so we cannot ignore the original grammar of the word and change the meaning.

In this case we need to add an “s” to the verb “live” and change to :

Only a handful still lives in their villages.

Sometimes the examination board can be wrong !

'Handful' means 少數, but 少數 doesn't mean that their villages have
just only one person living in it, so the sentence don't need to add 's'.

Hope I can help you......

2008-07-01 23:03:55 補充：
If you want to confirm the meaning, you can go to

http://hk.dictionary.yahoo.com/search.html?q=1&s=handful

to see.

a handful means as much/many as can be held in one hand. i.e. not much/many

Not many but probably still more than one. Therefore it is not 'third person singular'.

2008-07-02 10:16:34 補充：
"Only a handful (of the villagers) still live in their villages." is similar to
"Only a few (of the villagers) still live in their villages."

'handful' and 'few' are adjectives.
Should we say 'Only a few still live...' or 'Only a few still lives...' ?

個句子解「唯一極少數活在他們的村莊。」
係因為handful係「極少數」,但都係眾數,所以live唔洗加s.....

以上都係我個人詁計^^