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« on: May 14, 2010, 02:48:32 PM »
My dear Glensky,
Thank you, I slept well indeed. Probably much better than did you, considering the outcome of the Philippine elections.
I concur with your advice that readers-learners ought to be analytical and precise in their perceptions. If you follow your own advice, you will have noticed that my latter argument with Joe centres not so much on what is or is not singular or plural but on a divergence of opinions (yours and his) over what is subject and what is modifier. To recap:
Carillo:
Grammatically, of course, the verb should take the singular form because the operative subject in the noun phrase “those many gallons of petrol” isn’t the plural “those many gallons” but the singular mass noun “petrol.”
Glensky:
Just like the second example, "many gallons" is the real subject." "Of petrol" is a modifier.
Carillo:
Good point, Glensky! I absolutely agree with your explanation.
Bemused readers:
??
Here we have Joe telling us what the subject is, then you coming along and telling us it is something else, and then Joe agrees with you.
When I pointed out this contradiction, Joe goes off into an epic, obfuscating explanation of a topic I was not referring to. Not only shifting the goalposts again but playing another game!
As to your “rule” about mass nouns, I agree with it even though, to a degree, Fowler would take issue with you.
What riles me is people declaring nouns to be “notionally”singular or plural when they are plainly not. If there is but one item, be it water, petrol, a year, a metre, a length, cats, dog, fire hydrant… whatever, then that item is logically, philologically, mathematically and grammatically singular. If there are more than one, then those items are logically, philologically, mathematically and grammatically plural. To make the distinction is why the terms were invented, one would think.
Noun phrases, however, are (is?) another matter. The notional number given to such phrases (and to a certain few nouns like “team”) is an idiomatic device that has been in use for yonks and cannot be argued against.
Then Joe comes up with:
I'm very much aware that this subject-verb agreement issue remains highly contentious, but I have come to the conclusion that whether the verb in such cases should be singular or plural actually depends on the speaker's point of view.
That is all very well, but how can the reader know for certain the speaker’s point of view? For all we know, he or she may simply have made a noun/verb agreement error!
(If you are a newly hired assistant of this magician, of course, you probably would ask him to be more specific by asking, “You mean one contiguous piece of rope 5 meters long, or did you mean five lengths of rope that were 1-meter-long apiece?”)
I think Joe meant “continuous”, and he meant to be consistent with his treatment of numbers.
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