One of those who: VP Sg or VP Pl?

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Fri Mar 3 23:44:02 UTC 2006


On Mar 2, 2006, at 8:29 PM, Wilson Gray 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?

as usual, i recommend a look at MWDEU, which has an article on "one
of those who", with references to the prescriptivist literature and
to a 1951 American Speech article by John Kenyon (who cites Jespersen
on the subject).  also to literature that suggests that plural verb
agreement, which is what prescriptivists insist on, predominates, but
shows that both agreement patterns are amply attested at least from
Shakespeare to recent times (sometimes even in the work of a single
author).

kenyon's proposal is that someone who chooses the singular "is more
immediately concerned with _one_ than with _those_".

i had a student in my sophomore seminar a few years ago who did a
small study on the choice and found some effect on the choice from
the animacy of the plural noun.  she's now returned to the topic in
the undergraduate research seminar.  i'll ask her to summarize her
current thoughts for ADS-L.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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