One of those who: VP Sg or VP Pl?

[Wilson Gray]

I think that Kenyon pulled that out of his ass. I didn't even become aware
that strings like "I'm one of those who _post_ here every day" even existed
till I was in my forties, when I read about it in someone's paper on the
syntax of relatives. I'm still not consciously aware of ever having heard
such a string actually spoken. I can't have been making a choice when I
didn't know that a choice existed.

It's quite possible that I have heard it and that I've read it somewhere
other than in someone's paper. If so, my internal grammar either ignored it
or automatically "corrected" it.

As Eric Cartman has so eloquently put it:

If I'm happy and I know it,
Clap my hands!
If I'm happy and I know it,
Clap my hands!
If I'm happy and I know it,
Then my face will surely show it!
If I'm happy and I know it,
Clap my hands!

-Wilson

On 3/3/06, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: One of those who: VP Sg or VP Pl?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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