Jungle gyms and monkey bars

[Arnold Zwicky]

On May 3, 2012, at 5:05 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> Speaking of discrepancies, I have the strong feeling that I may well
> be the only native-speaker of English who "knows" that the "proper"
> forms are
>
> a) "… _ONE_ [of the few who still] _distinguishES_ …"
>
> as opposed to, e.g.
>
> b) "… _SOME_ [of the few who still] _distinguish_ …"
>
> I've become consciously aware of this so recently - I notice it in
> literature, but not in speech - that I don't know whether it's dialect
> - a black thing; you would't understand - or idiolect - even *I* don't
> understand how I came to have these structures, but *not*
>
> c) "… [one of the] FEW [who still] _distinguish_ …"
>
> which I used above only as a sop to my readers.

see

AZ, 6/7/06: One of those who:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003237.html

where you will find:

  If you look in MWDEU under *one of those who* you will find capsule histories of the variation in usage and of the controversy about it among the various "authorities" on grammar, usage, and style.  The article observes that each variant appears with some frequency, including by respected writers in formal contexts, and that often both appear in the work of a single writer (Joseph Addison in The Spectator, for instance).

excellent piece.

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org