One of those who: VP Sg or VP Pl?

[Jonathan Lighter]

I've heard this grammatical "rule," too.  It's obscure enough nowadays to make one feel extremely stupid.

  Both exx. sound fine to me. The rule, however, is based on the notion that, in this case, the writer is one of *those* lazy hippies, so the "who" is theoretically plural and the verb and possessive pronoun must agree with it.

  In contrast, however, two hundred and fifty million Americans agree with me that the entire statement emphasizes the writer (the subject of the main clause).  She is *one* of those hippies *and therefore she* likes etc. The "who" is theoretically singular. This interpretation may help to explain the development of the form, but obviously it's logically untenable  (from a prescriptive point of view).

  There's a third possibility:

  "I'm one of those lazy hippies who likes to do their...."

  This uses a gender-neutral singular "their."

  For formal occasions, I go with the prescriptive rule.  Otherwise, I'm one of those lazy hippies.  I can't believe I even care enough to write this.

  JL


Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: One of those who: VP Sg or VP Pl?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>From ARS Technica:

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

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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