One of those who: VP Sg or VP Pl?

Margaret Lee mlee303 at YAHOO.COM
Fri Mar 3 08:52:03 UTC 2006


The second sentence's use of the plural pronoun _their_ seems to be more acceptable in verbal language than in written, though in this case the "correct" verb should be _likes_ to agree with the singular pronoun _one_. The British seem to no longer regard pronoun-antecedent disagreement as an error; I saw the construction used widely, even in England's top newspapers when I was there three years ago.

  Margaret



Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  From ARS Technica:

"I'm one of those lazy hippies who _likes_ to do _her power-computing in bed
..."

For me, the above is absolutely grammatical. However, I've both heard and
read
that this string is ungrammatical and that the grammatical form is:

"I'm one of those lazy hippies who _like_ to do _their_ power-computing in
bed ..."

Does anyone else care enough to write an opinion?

-Wilson Gray

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