subject-verb agreement

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 10, 2004, at 10:23 AM, i wrote:

> ...now, there is some precedent for claiming that DA conflicts are
> irresolvable.  charles fillmore suggested, many years ago, that some
> conflicts (these in particular) produced gaps in the predictions of the
> grammar, analogous to paradigm gaps in morphology...

i was startled yesterday when i discovered that AHD4 lists "stridden"
as  the  past participle of "stride", without comment; a great many
people reject both "strived" and "stridden".  apparently there are
enough who produce "stridden" that AHD4 lists it -- but it's hard to
believe that these people are now in the majority.  when i ask classes
to supply a past participle  for "stride", almost everyone falls into
consternation or giggles.

> ...the fact is, when you collect judgments (and examples from corpora)
> some speakers resolve via AND, regardless of the order of the
> disjuncts:
>   Neither the owners nor the contractor agree.

my mistake: AHN, not AND.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)