On several occasions these past four years, I have pointed out that the pronoun “they” rather than “them” is the correct form of the subject complement in this
inverted sentence: “The winners of the contests were (
they,
them).” Replying to a follow-up question on my Facebook page by grammar enthusiast Marianne, I explained that the operative grammar rule in such situations is that in English, a pronoun acting as a subject complement always takes the subjective form whether the sentence is in its normative or inverted form.
The normative or regular form of the inverted sentence “The winners of the contests
were they” is, of course, “
They were the winners of the contests,” where there’s perfect subject-verb agreement between the plural subject “they” and the likewise plural past-tense form “were” of the linking verb “be.” What unmistakably marks a subject complement is that the information it provides is always preceded by the appropriate form of the linking verb “be.”
We must keep in mind, however, that
inverted sentences in English have a subject-verb agreement peculiarity when their predicate is a noun phrase, and I would like to acknowledge that this must have been what had been bugging Marianne when she raised her follow-up question about inverse copular or linking verb construction.
However, this peculiarity doesn’t come into play when there’s no difference in number between subject and predicate, as in this inverted sentence she presented, “The winners of the contests
were they.” Its normative form is, of course, “
They were the winners of the contests.” Note that in contrast, its inverted form has “the winners of the contests” as plural subject, the subject complement “they” as plural predicate, and the past-tense plural “were” as linking verb.
But what happens when a normative sentence like, say, “Her pretrial antics are a needless complication” takes the inverted form? Do we say or write “
A needless complication are her pretrial antics” or “A needless complication
is her pretrial antics”?
This may come as a surprise, but
when an English sentence is inverted, the form of the linking verb should agree with the number—and of course also with the tense—of the singular noun phrase to its left instead of the plural subject to its right. Thus, for the normative sentence “
Her pretrial antics are a needless complication,” the grammatically correct inverted construction is “A needless complication
is her pretrial antics.”
Another example: The normative sentence “Those women parading in swimsuits
are definitely a pleasant sight” inverts to “Definitely a pleasant sight
is those women parading in swimsuits.”
Perhaps a clearer, more practical way of describing this subject-verb agreement peculiarity of inverted sentences is that
when the subject and predicate of a sentence differs in number, the linking verb agrees with the number of the noun phrase to its left. For this reason, the normative sentence “What I need
is two round-trip bookings to Puerto Princesa,” inverts to “T
wo round-trip bookings to Puerto Princesa are what I need.”
Even if no sentence inversion is involved, we must keep in mind that this subject-verb agreement rule in English normally also applies when the subject and predicate of a sentence are both in the form of noun phrases (as opposed to stand-alone nouns or pronouns) and when they differ in number or person as well. In such cases, the form of the linking verb “be” agrees with the preceding noun phrase—the one on the left of the sentence—even if that noun phrase is not logically the subject.
Thus, we don’t say “The immediate cause of her unsettling predicament
are the lewd video clips discovered in her cellular phone” but say “
The immediate cause of her unsettling predicament is the lewd video clips discovered in her cellular phone.”
(Next:
What constitutes a dependent clause in reported speech) December 17, 2020
This essay, 2,023rd of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the December 10, 2020 Internet edition of The Manila Times
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