As we all know, the basic grammar rule in English is that the operative verb of a sentence should always agree with its subject in number. When the subject or doer of the action is singular, the verb takes the singular form; conversely, when that subject or doer is plural, the verb takes the plural form.
In practice, though, this rule gets difficult to apply when the subject or doer isn’t a simple, clear-cut noun like “petrol” but a noun phrase like, say, “five gallons of petrol.” For instance, in the sentence “Five gallons of petrol (is, are) not enough to get you to Sydney,” we couldn’t be too sure if the verb should take the singular form for the singular mass-noun “petrol” or the plural form for the measure “five gallons.”
Over the years, in this column and lately also in the Forum, my position has always been that noun phrases like “five gallons of petrol” are grammatically and notionally singular because their true subject is the singular mass noun and not its plural-form measure. In the case of “five gallons of petrol,” however, this grammar prescription is admittedly hard to swallow because of the strong preeminence of the plural measure “five gallons.” Indeed, it’s conceptually much easier to grasp the singular character of such noun phrases as “five meters of cloth,” “five kilos of rice,” and “over 20 years of teaching.”
A few months back, my choice of the singular verb form for such noun phrases was bolstered when (then)
Manila Times editor in chief Rene Bas cited this much more succinct grammar rule: “A noun-phrase subject naming a unit of measurement, currency, length of time, etc., calls for a singular verb because no matter the quantity, amount, length of time, number of units, etc., the sense is that of a totality, a whole. Therefore: ‘five meters of rope was needed,’ ‘ten pesos is the selling price,’ ‘40 minutes is too long for a speech,’ and ‘30 pieces of silver was Judas’ bribe.’”
Even the usual detractors of my position in the “petrol” subject-verb agreement conundrum welcomed this explanation, so there has been a pleasant respite in the debates on this grammar issue. But recently, Glensky, a new Forum member, caused the debate to flare up again when he cited this rule for noun phrases consisting of a mass noun and quantifier: “When the mass noun has its own quantifier, the subject can take either a singular or plural verb, depending on the number of the subject as indicated by the quantifier.”
Glensky gave the following illustrative examples: “
Five bottles of water are enough to quench our thirst.” “
One bottle of water is enough to quench our thirst.” “T
hose many gallons of petrol are not sufficient to fuel my car.” “One gallon of petrol is not sufficient to fuel my car.”
He explained that in the first example, the real subject is “five bottles” and “of water” is just an adjectival modifier. In the sentence using “those many gallons of petrol,” he said, “many gallons” is the real subject and “of petrol” is only a modifier. He also observed that the modifier “those” emphasizes the “individuality” of each gallon of the petrol. Because of this, he says, “the more that the verb form should be plural.”
After closely examining Glensky’s arguments, I came to the conclusion that whether the verb in such cases should be singular or plural would actually depend on the speaker’s point of view. But as soon as I declared this change in my position, a particularly abrasive Australia-based Forum member told me pointblank: “Your explanation flies in the face of your earlier contention that ‘many years of study’ is singular. You can’t have it both ways.”
In my next column, I’ll explain in detail why we can, in fact, have it both ways.
(Next:
The subject-verb agreement conundrum flares up again – 2) September 4, 2018
This essay first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the May 15,2010 issue of The Manila Times
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