MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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Two subject-verb disagreement errors committed by columnist?

Let’s start off 2012 with a lively discussion of what a Forum member felt was a noted Filipino columnist’s flagrant subject-verb disagreement errors in her commentary about the Philippine Supreme Court justices in the December 24, 2011 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Forum member Sphinx, himself a lawyer, made this posting last December 30:

Here’s my reply to Sphinx:

Like you, Sphinx, my feeling at first blush was that this sentence from Ms. Monsod’s column has two subject-verb disagreement errors in quick succession: “Justice Antonio Carpio and Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno each have a dissenting opinion, Justice Arturo Brion and Justice Presbitero Velasco each have a separate opinion....” My thinking was that since the pronoun “each” in both instances is singular, the operative verb should be the singular “has” rather than the plural “have,” so that sentence should be corrected as follows: “Justice Antonio Carpio and Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno each has a dissenting opinion, Justice Arturo Brion and Justice Presbitero Velasco each has a separate opinion....”   
 
However, it turns out that the usage of “each” in such constructions is more contentious and controversial than I thought, and that “each” in such constructions can also be viewed as an “adjective following a plural noun subject.” In any case, way back in 1969, the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) rejected the usage of the plural “each” in “they each have large followings” by a whopping 95 percent—meaning, of course, that only 5 percent thought that the usage of “each have” in that construction is correct. (Click this link to “Wordsmiths: They Also Serve Who Only Vote on ‘Ain’t’,” a New York Times feature article on the workings of the AHD Usage Panel.) But it appears that the AHD had since upheld the correctness of “each have” in such constructions, as indicated in this usage note in 2010 for its 4th edition :

On the other hand, the online Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (MWD) has been firmly in favor of the plural “each have” all along, even commenting that the members of the AHD Usage Panel “were marching alone, apparently,” in their 95:5 rejection of the plural “each have.” The MWD cites several English-language authorities and the 1982 edition of the AHD itself as approving the plural pronoun in such instances, then offers the following examples of that construction, among others:

“Our containerboard mills each conduct five-year programs.”—Annual Report, Owens Illinois, 1970

“If we and our Atlantic community partners each take our respective share.”—Dean Acheson, U.S. State Dept. Bulletin, 12 June 1950

(Click this link to the full discussion by the MWD of the “each have” usage)

So where do these differing opinions on the plural “each have” lead us?

I think that as in the case of the Philippine Supreme Court, we should decide on this collegially and follow the rule of the majority of the English-language authorities. This means, of course, that Ms. Monsod’s use of “each have” in her column –and the Inquirer’s acceptance of it—is  grammatically correct and beyond contestation.

If anyone remains uncomfortable with the plural “each have,” however, I suggest this alternative: knock off “each” in both instances from the sentence so it can use the plural “have,” as follows: “Justice Antonio Carpio and Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno have separate dissenting opinions, Justice Arturo Brion and Justice Presbitero Velasco have separate opinions....” 

That should settle the matter for good.

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SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Misuse of the intransitive verb “robbed” in headline

The headline of the news story above, “P800,000 cash robbed from crematory home in Makati,” misuses the intransitive verb “rob,” which means “to commit robbery.” The PhP800,000 in cash couldn’t have been robbed, of course; it was the crematory home that was robbed of that cash by the armed thieves. The correct verb is the intransitive “stolen,” which means the cash was “taken away wrongfully,” so that headline should have read as follows:

P800,000 cash stolen from crematory home in Makati

Alternatively, that headline can be constructed as follows:

Crematory home in Makati robbed of P800,000 cash
or
Thieves rob crematory home of P800,000 in cash

(2) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Superfluous use of the adverb “just”

The lead sentence above superfluously rubs in the figurative expression “in the nick of time” by modifying it with the adverb “just.” That expression, which means “a final critical moment,” already subsumes the “just” aspect, so “just” must be dropped from that sentence as follows:

“Responding firefighters arrived in the nick of time to save a family of five who were trapped inside a burning building beside Mandaluyong Medical Center before dawn yesterday.”

(3) The Philippine Star: Misuse of prepositions

The lead sentence above commits the classic misuse of the preposition “to” in the relative phrase “that resulted to the apprehension of”; the correct preposition is “in,” so that phrase should read as “that resulted in the apprehension of.” Also, the first sentence of the third paragraph misuses the preposition “amid,” which means “during” or “in the middle of,” in the phrase “amid prohibition.” The correct preposition is “despite,” meaning “in defiance or contempt of,” so the phrase “amid prohibition” should read as “despite the prohibition” instead.

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