Agreeing to disagree
Apr. 12th, 2004 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynSubject-verb agreement is such a dense topic that I could write 5,000 words on this and still not address everything. So I’m going to focus on the most confusing parts, and hope I cover it, because it’s a tough topic to address without a lot of grammary rules intruding on the discussion.
I can easily eliminate the most basic part of it -- how present and past tense forms of verbs like give or have or the being verbs are used, because most of us who’ve grown up speaking English know this. (It’s a lot tougher for folks learning English as a second language, though.) We learn that it’s He takes or I take, She is or They are, and so on. Subject-verb agreement weirdness only pops up in the stranger circumstances, or when someone’s basically just an idiot and can’t write a sentence to save their life.
But what confuses people most, I think, is the basic concept that a verb (a word that denotes action of some kind, or a state of being), and the person (subject) who’s doing that action, must agree in number. I can understand the temptation to ask, why? This trips people up most in being verbs such as was, were, are, and so on. So I’ll try to pay attention to these confusion areas and hope I don’t confuse it more.
Problem area 1: The verb should agree with its subject, not the words that might come in between them. A lot of times, you’ll find that your sentence’s subject and the verb that describes what the subject is doing can be separated by anywhere from one to a half-dozen words. So then your brain spazzes out and you go, wait -- how do I know which of these words the verb should agree with? If you mentally take out the modifying words from your subject, you can figure this out:
The cops in the station house need their morning donuts. (Itals indicate the subject and the verb)
Increased levels of kryptonitecauses cause loss of Clark Kent’s superpowers. (strip out the phrase “of kryptonite” and you see the verb “levels cause”)
A wardrobe of Armani suitscost costs more than an FBI agent makes in a lifetime. (take out Armani suits to hear “wardrobe costs”)
Don’t get tripped up by phrases like as well as, additionally, along with, etc., as these won’t make your singular subject plural:
The Assistant Director, along with his agent lover,were was shot.
If the writer wanted to emphasize that both of these people were shot, they could use and: The Assistant Director and his agent lover were both shot.
Something similar is when you get a subject and a linking verb, plus a subject complement (something that describes the subject). Don’t confuse that descriptive term with your subject, and you’ll have an easier time finding your verb tense: The most covert operation in anti-terrorism today is Section One. Here, operation is your subject, not anti-terrorism. To make this smoother, if you have trouble, you can recast your sentence like “Section One is the most covert...”
Problem area 2: Compound subjects connected by and are plurals. If you’ve got more than one subject (say, two people connected by the word and), then you’ve got what’s called a compound subject. If you’re using the word and in there, then it’s a pretty likely bet you’ll have a plural subject (Jim and Blair live together).
Ezra’s talkativeness and loose moralshas have led him to a life of crime.
Where this starts to confuse the hell out of folks is when you get something that has and, but forms a single unit: ball and chain, friend and confidant, and so on. You know, those cliché type phrases. In that case, you’d treat the compound as singular: My master and commander is Lucky Jack Aubrey (not are).
And then it gets worse, because if you throw each in front of your compounds, you still need to keep it singular: Each sail, rope, and cannon needs to be inspected by the captain. No wonder people can’t get it right!
Problem area 3: If you connect your verbs with words like or or nor, you should make the verb agree with the part of the subject nearest to the verb. So you’d have: If a cop or FBI agent tells you to open up, you should do it. (Tells, not tell, because it would be cop...tells, agent...tells).
Problem area 4: Indefinite pronouns. Okay, I dread this one. Indefinite pronouns refer to nonspecific things or persons. They might look specific, but you should treat them as singular verbs in written English: anybody, anyone, each, either, everybody, everyone, everything, neither, none, no one, someone, something.
Each of these vampireshave has been chipped.
Everyone who signed up for the class playwere was killed.
It’s made worse when you learn that none and neither, if they’re used alone, are treated as singular -- such as “Three rooms are available; none has a cat in it” -- but you know, worlds are not going to collapse if you get this one wrong. If you say “Neither are able to attend the Slayer’s Ball” instead of “Neither is,” the only folks who are likely to come after you will be pedants who can’t lighten up. If you get most of the rest of these right, a slip on weird little pointless exceptions to rules, in my not even remotely humble opinion, is just fine. Especially because this isn’t the only exception to this rule -- there are more! And grammarians argue about them all the time. I think it’s often safer to treat these as singular if you’re in doubt (Neither of these nicknames fits Spike; None of these jobs requires slaying experience). People will argue with me, but... eh.
Problem area 5: Treat collective nouns as singular unless the meaning is clearly plural. This is simply the most difficult concept to convey in usage, if you ask me. I hate this one. I fear it. In American English, we usually treat collective nouns as singular, emphasizing a group as a unit. British English, not so much. BUT, if there’s a reason to emphasize the individual members, then you treat the noun as plural. Arg! This first sentence illustrates the idea of the group as a single entity, and the second sentence shows how it would be as a group of individuals:
The Council respects the new slayers.
The Council are debating Buffy’s plan to bring in new slayers.
In some cases, if you think of adding something like members, you can see how the plural thing comes in (the Council members are debating...)
But woe to the person trying to figure out, for instance, if couple should be is or are, and so on. I’ve seen this debated for hours, and it’s not fun. Especially because in BrE, it’s different -- where we might treat a business, say, as singular, they treat it as a collective noun: Angel Investigations is closing for business; Angel Investigations are closing for business. And if you start agonizing about units of measurement, you get the same craptastic advice about collective vs. individual (three-fourths of the FBI were probed by aliens [individuals in the group]; a quarter of the blood supply was missing [the number as single entity]). Some good dictionaries can actually help you with this, and may provide sample sentences for certain words such as couple and group -- it doesn’t hurt to check a dictionary for the word you’re confused on, just to see if there’s any indication of how you should treat it with a verb. And when in doubt, ask -- me, or someone you know who gets this stuff, because seriously, this one is really, really hard.
Problem area 6: The dreaded pronouns and their antecedents. Some relative pronouns (like who, which, and that) have what are called antecedents (the words they’re referring): the gun that killed the president, where gun is the antecedent of that. But if you throw in these weird phrases like “one of the” or “only one of the”, you add confusion to the mix. You’re usually safe if you treat “one of the” as plural, and “only one of the” as singular.
Fighting ability is one of the things thatsets set slayers apart from normal humans. (The antecedent of that is things, not one.)
Lilah is the only one of the attorneys whohave has the ability to run the evil law firm. (Because only one attorney can run it, so the antecedent of who is one, not attorneys.)
But seriously, this is another one of those things where if you get the rest of the basic stuff right, civilizations will not crumble just because you mess this one up. It’s hard even for seasoned pros.
Problem area 7: Titles and some words that are used as subjects are singular, even if they look plural. If you’re describing a subject (a collective body of knowledge) like mathematics, news, statistics, and so on, then you’ll still use a singular verb form (I think statistics is the worst class ever). And a title of a book or album, or what have you, will still be singular, even if the title uses plural words (A Tale of Two Cities was Spike’s favorite book).
I’m not even going near data right now. This is too long as is, and people fight over this all the time, so... if you want to say data is or data are, I salute you either way. You’re still better off saying “media are” because media is the plural of medium (for instance, the medium is a newspaper, but media are a collection of news sources), but the data thing has gone beyond even the most stalwart grammarian’s ability to cope, and media probably will someday, too. And you know what? Language changes. I say the data that suggests the world will explode if we don’t use it correctly is wrong.
I can easily eliminate the most basic part of it -- how present and past tense forms of verbs like give or have or the being verbs are used, because most of us who’ve grown up speaking English know this. (It’s a lot tougher for folks learning English as a second language, though.) We learn that it’s He takes or I take, She is or They are, and so on. Subject-verb agreement weirdness only pops up in the stranger circumstances, or when someone’s basically just an idiot and can’t write a sentence to save their life.
But what confuses people most, I think, is the basic concept that a verb (a word that denotes action of some kind, or a state of being), and the person (subject) who’s doing that action, must agree in number. I can understand the temptation to ask, why? This trips people up most in being verbs such as was, were, are, and so on. So I’ll try to pay attention to these confusion areas and hope I don’t confuse it more.
Problem area 1: The verb should agree with its subject, not the words that might come in between them. A lot of times, you’ll find that your sentence’s subject and the verb that describes what the subject is doing can be separated by anywhere from one to a half-dozen words. So then your brain spazzes out and you go, wait -- how do I know which of these words the verb should agree with? If you mentally take out the modifying words from your subject, you can figure this out:
The cops in the station house need their morning donuts. (Itals indicate the subject and the verb)
Increased levels of kryptonite
A wardrobe of Armani suits
Don’t get tripped up by phrases like as well as, additionally, along with, etc., as these won’t make your singular subject plural:
The Assistant Director, along with his agent lover,
If the writer wanted to emphasize that both of these people were shot, they could use and: The Assistant Director and his agent lover were both shot.
Something similar is when you get a subject and a linking verb, plus a subject complement (something that describes the subject). Don’t confuse that descriptive term with your subject, and you’ll have an easier time finding your verb tense: The most covert operation in anti-terrorism today is Section One. Here, operation is your subject, not anti-terrorism. To make this smoother, if you have trouble, you can recast your sentence like “Section One is the most covert...”
Problem area 2: Compound subjects connected by and are plurals. If you’ve got more than one subject (say, two people connected by the word and), then you’ve got what’s called a compound subject. If you’re using the word and in there, then it’s a pretty likely bet you’ll have a plural subject (Jim and Blair live together).
Ezra’s talkativeness and loose morals
Where this starts to confuse the hell out of folks is when you get something that has and, but forms a single unit: ball and chain, friend and confidant, and so on. You know, those cliché type phrases. In that case, you’d treat the compound as singular: My master and commander is Lucky Jack Aubrey (not are).
And then it gets worse, because if you throw each in front of your compounds, you still need to keep it singular: Each sail, rope, and cannon needs to be inspected by the captain. No wonder people can’t get it right!
Problem area 3: If you connect your verbs with words like or or nor, you should make the verb agree with the part of the subject nearest to the verb. So you’d have: If a cop or FBI agent tells you to open up, you should do it. (Tells, not tell, because it would be cop...tells, agent...tells).
Problem area 4: Indefinite pronouns. Okay, I dread this one. Indefinite pronouns refer to nonspecific things or persons. They might look specific, but you should treat them as singular verbs in written English: anybody, anyone, each, either, everybody, everyone, everything, neither, none, no one, someone, something.
Each of these vampires
Everyone who signed up for the class play
It’s made worse when you learn that none and neither, if they’re used alone, are treated as singular -- such as “Three rooms are available; none has a cat in it” -- but you know, worlds are not going to collapse if you get this one wrong. If you say “Neither are able to attend the Slayer’s Ball” instead of “Neither is,” the only folks who are likely to come after you will be pedants who can’t lighten up. If you get most of the rest of these right, a slip on weird little pointless exceptions to rules, in my not even remotely humble opinion, is just fine. Especially because this isn’t the only exception to this rule -- there are more! And grammarians argue about them all the time. I think it’s often safer to treat these as singular if you’re in doubt (Neither of these nicknames fits Spike; None of these jobs requires slaying experience). People will argue with me, but... eh.
Problem area 5: Treat collective nouns as singular unless the meaning is clearly plural. This is simply the most difficult concept to convey in usage, if you ask me. I hate this one. I fear it. In American English, we usually treat collective nouns as singular, emphasizing a group as a unit. British English, not so much. BUT, if there’s a reason to emphasize the individual members, then you treat the noun as plural. Arg! This first sentence illustrates the idea of the group as a single entity, and the second sentence shows how it would be as a group of individuals:
The Council respects the new slayers.
The Council are debating Buffy’s plan to bring in new slayers.
In some cases, if you think of adding something like members, you can see how the plural thing comes in (the Council members are debating...)
But woe to the person trying to figure out, for instance, if couple should be is or are, and so on. I’ve seen this debated for hours, and it’s not fun. Especially because in BrE, it’s different -- where we might treat a business, say, as singular, they treat it as a collective noun: Angel Investigations is closing for business; Angel Investigations are closing for business. And if you start agonizing about units of measurement, you get the same craptastic advice about collective vs. individual (three-fourths of the FBI were probed by aliens [individuals in the group]; a quarter of the blood supply was missing [the number as single entity]). Some good dictionaries can actually help you with this, and may provide sample sentences for certain words such as couple and group -- it doesn’t hurt to check a dictionary for the word you’re confused on, just to see if there’s any indication of how you should treat it with a verb. And when in doubt, ask -- me, or someone you know who gets this stuff, because seriously, this one is really, really hard.
Problem area 6: The dreaded pronouns and their antecedents. Some relative pronouns (like who, which, and that) have what are called antecedents (the words they’re referring): the gun that killed the president, where gun is the antecedent of that. But if you throw in these weird phrases like “one of the” or “only one of the”, you add confusion to the mix. You’re usually safe if you treat “one of the” as plural, and “only one of the” as singular.
Fighting ability is one of the things that
Lilah is the only one of the attorneys who
But seriously, this is another one of those things where if you get the rest of the basic stuff right, civilizations will not crumble just because you mess this one up. It’s hard even for seasoned pros.
Problem area 7: Titles and some words that are used as subjects are singular, even if they look plural. If you’re describing a subject (a collective body of knowledge) like mathematics, news, statistics, and so on, then you’ll still use a singular verb form (I think statistics is the worst class ever). And a title of a book or album, or what have you, will still be singular, even if the title uses plural words (A Tale of Two Cities was Spike’s favorite book).
I’m not even going near data right now. This is too long as is, and people fight over this all the time, so... if you want to say data is or data are, I salute you either way. You’re still better off saying “media are” because media is the plural of medium (for instance, the medium is a newspaper, but media are a collection of news sources), but the data thing has gone beyond even the most stalwart grammarian’s ability to cope, and media probably will someday, too. And you know what? Language changes. I say the data that suggests the world will explode if we don’t use it correctly is wrong.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-12 12:38 pm (UTC)Words are harder to use than it seems at first glance: they look all innocuous, sitting there on the page, but then you learn they have a million ways of tripping you up. ;)
um, typo alert
Date: 2004-04-12 12:45 pm (UTC)But note that you've got "a verb . . . , and the person (subject) who's doing that action, must agree in tense," where you want in number.
(Have you ever addressed commas? I would have used them differently than you did in that sentence, too, so I'm curious.)
Re: um, typo alert
Date: 2004-04-12 03:55 pm (UTC)Definitely not the grammar queen -- unlike you, I could never hope to explain complex grammar rules, but I do seem to have a facility for at least giving folks the lowdown on what's important vs. what they might not really understand. I've never thought I was much of a good "teacher," but people keep saying they like these, so... There is a comma one -- I tend to use commas pretty heavily in these in order to make it easier to get, but I talk about the serial comma in one of the earliest ones -- they're all in my memories section under Usage posts, or if you just look at the main LJ page, in my list of links, they're in the Usage Posts link. Some of the comments from folks are really cool, too -- lots of really knowledgeable people out there!
I really need to resubscribe to CE-L. I miss it horribly. It's such a pain from home because people just cannot seem to understand that an e-mail handle can differ from your business name and still be okay. ;-)
Re: um, typo alert
Date: 2004-04-12 10:17 pm (UTC)Re: um, typo alert
Date: 2004-04-13 06:36 am (UTC)It's such a pain from home because people just cannot seem to understand that an e-mail handle can differ from your business name and still be okay.
You've actually had problems with that? Hmph, I'd have expected better from CELfolks. Let 'em whinge. (Or can your email program or ISP set you up with two email handles? Mine does, which is how I'm now using different addresses for fannish and nonfannish stuff, all from the same account.)
Re: um, typo alert
Date: 2004-04-13 11:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-12 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-12 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-13 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-12 07:47 pm (UTC)I'm guilty of this one quite a bit :-(
Thanks for the sound advice (as usual), Gwyn. I hope things are going well with you!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-12 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-13 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-13 11:26 am (UTC)