one of those who... (was: Jungle gyms and monkey bars)

[Laurence Horn]

On May 3, 2012, at 8:36 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

>
> On May 3, 2012, at 8:05 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.
>> --
>>
> Why isn't it "…one [of [the FEW who still distinguish…]]"
>
> Notice the possibility of "Of the few who still distinguish…, I am one"
>
> Could you say "Of the few who still distinguishes…, I am one"?
>
> Or consider "he's one of the guys who are surrounding the house"; could you say "he's one of the guys who is surrounding the house"?
>
>
> (Granted I'm only constructing a syntactic argument or two to prove the correctness of my brute intuition, but still.)
>
P.S.  Here's another, on behalf of my plural agreement brigade:

He's one of the many clones we manufactured who are indistinguishable from each other.   vs.
*He's one of the many clones we manufactured who is indistinguishable from each other.

LH

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