I have an excersise where I have to fill the gap with the verb "believe" in present simple:
"An atheist ______ in God"
I was thinking the pronoun of an atheist would be "it", causing the result to be: "An atheist does not believes in god". But it's wrong
What pronoun corresponds in this case?
An atheist is a person. The pronoun for a person is either "he" or "she" and sometimes the singular "they" is used when we do not know the gender of a person. In this case, gender is irrelevant, the verb that follows the singular subject must always be in the 3rd person singular.
The correct answer is in the 3rd person singular in the negative form.
"An atheist does not believe in God
"An atheist" would be 'he' or 'she'. All singular nouns have the third-person-singular "believes" when they are the subject (though there is a little flexibility when a singular noun refers to a group of things). And all plural nouns have third-person-plural.
However, atheists are people who don't believe in any god!
In all cases, the first verb is conjugated according to the subject.
An atheist believes in God.
To form a negative sentence we use the helper verb to do (in the negative form) and use the bare infinitive form of the main verb. The first verb, to do, is still conjugated. Note that because the word "do" ends in a vowel, when we conjugate it by adding an "s" to the end we also add an "e."
An atheist does not believe in God.
