About phrases "as is", "as follows"

Patrick   Wed May 31, 2006 7:15 pm GMT
Hi, have you guys noticed such phrases as "as is", "as follows"? Why is the third person singular form of the present tense verb used here? I looked up some grammar books and hadn't found any satisfactory explanation about this scenario. If "is" here is the main verb (that comes after the subject), is "it" omitted here for "as (it) is", "as (it) follows"? If "is" is not the main verb here, I don't know how to grammatically explain this phenomenon. Because in most cases, if a verb is not used in the main verb form, it is usaully used in these 3 categories, infinitive including bare infinitive (infinitive without "to"), -ing participle, and -ed participle (past participle). Maybe you can say it's just a traditional usage, no explanation. But somehow, I think most English sentences should be grammatically explained well. For example, The English sentence "God bless you!" had puzzled me for a long time. Why is "bless", not "blesses" used here in this sentence? Later, someone told me that a word was omitted here. The full sentence should be "May God bless you!" Oh, I fully understood. How about the phrases mentioned above, "as is", "as follows"? Do you guys have any idea in giving a grammatical analysis about these phrases?
A6015LC   Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:51 am GMT
"as is" "as follows"

These are relatively idiomatic* expressions. You are correct in postulating the omission of an "it." This ellipsis is the reason the expressions are idiomatic.

"God bless you"

The verb is "bless" rather than "blesses" for one of two probable reasons (and we could have a lively debate over it):

1. the verb is being used in the subjunctive mood; or

2. through ellipsis again, "may" has been dropped from the expression ("May God bless you") leaving the base verb form.

Regardless of the explanation you prefer, this use of the verb is also very idiomatic.

English verb inflection is pretty limited. Most English verbs have only four forms ("walk, walks, walking, walked"), a number have five ("bite, bites, biting, bit, bitten"), a few have more than five with "be" topping the list ("be, am, are, is, was, were, been, being").**

* That is to say, of singular and peculiar usage limited to a very specific meaning.

** I'm ignoring here all the negative forms with "-n't" of course ("ain't, aren't, isn't, wasn't, weren't").
frank   Fri Jun 02, 2006 1:37 am GMT
I have had some teachers who tried to explain to me that "as is" and "as it is" are completely different as regards meaning.
Acording to the Longman Dictionary,"as it is" means "in reality"; in the situation that actually exists: We had hoped to finish it today, but as it is we probably won't finish until tomorrow.