A month ago Forum member Kat Manapat sent through my Facebook Messenger this intriguingly slippery question: “Sir, is a noun phrase that starts with ‘what’ always singular? I am giving these two examples: ‘What makes you beautiful is your smile.’ ‘What fuels my passion is my love.’
“Or can ‘that’ be plural depending on the predicate, as in ‘What fuels your passion are found in your heart.’
“There can be a number of things that can be found inside the heart to serve as inspiration, so can we use “are” in that sentence?
My reply to Kat Manapat:I don’t think all noun phrases that begin with the pronoun “what” can be singular. It does beguilingly seem to be true with the two sample statements you presented: “
What makes you beautiful
is your smile.” “
What fuels my passion
is my love.” I imagine that it’s because speakers who think so—in this particular case you yourself—already have the mindset that the subject “what” is singular and are just subconsciously but correctly pursuing and tailoring the details of that presumption at the very moment of articulation.
Let me explain.
The usage of the pronoun “what” at issue here
is meant for directing attention to a statement that the speaker is about to make, in the sense of the ellipted expression “You know
what?” as in “
What seems to be the matter
is the noisy party next door”
(singular) or “
What lie beneath
are two things:
the treasure you stole, and
the body of its owner”
(plural).
There really is no grammatical or semantic limitation to the number—whether singular or plural—of the subjects or objects that “what” can refer to in the predicate of such statements, as we can clearly see in the following examples:
1. “
What make you very untrustworthy
are two things:
your extreme racism and
your being a pathological liar.”
(plural)2. “
What detract from your suitability for this very sensitive position
are these:
your conviction as a youthful sexual offender and y
our long bad credit record.”
(plural)As to the question on whether “are” is correctly used in this sentence of yours, “What fuels your passion are found in your heart,” my answer is a yes, but to avoid any lingering doubt in your listener’s mind, I think it’s grammatically prudent to use the singular “is”: “
What fuels your passion
is found in your heart.”
However, since it’s evident that you actually have in mind more than just one “fuel” or “trigger” for that passion, it is advisable to make the “what” here truly plural by adding the details to justify it, as in “
What fuel your passion
are found in your heart:
your compassion for the oppressed, and
your hatred for their oppressors.”
***
A month ago Forum member Miss Mae posted this observation:“I didn’t give the term ‘social distancing’ much thought until I read GMA-7’s Mr. Howie Severino argue in a graduation speech that it should be referred to as ‘physical distancing.’
“Is he correct, Sir? I thought ‘social’ was used in that terminology in the same sense as Aristotle’s when he said ‘man is by nature a social animal.’”
My reply to Miss Mae: By this time I think the choice between “social distancing” and “physical distancing” has become trivial wordplay that’s not really worth arguing about. The crucial thing is to religiously observe distancing as a very effective health-protection advice, and given Mr. Howie Severino’s very close encounter with the coronavirus and his most fortunate recovery, I think you and Howie will agree with me that this is definitely not the time to debate the grammar and philosophical underpinnings of that health-saving regimen.
Let’s just do it as a matter of survival.
(Next week:
When splitting infinitives becomes a must for clarity’s sake) July 9, 2020
This essay, 2,001st of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the July 2, 2020 Internet edition of The Manila Times
,© 2020 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.Read this essay online in
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“What” isn’t always singular when it leads off an assertion
