non-head nominals and number agreement

[Laurence Horn]

It's standard for such constructions as "a lot of", "a number of",
etc. to take plural agreement, inidcating that the nominals in such
constructions are not heads but quantifiers (functioning essentially
like "many").  I've been hearing some new ones lately.  On ABC's
World News Tonight tonight, Charlie Gibson led off with a report on
the report of a commission to address the military health care
scandal by uttering (1) below.  Later in the same broadcast, he
introduced another story, on security breaches at airports around the
country, by uttering something like (2).  The latter doesn't strike
me as particularly noteworthy; I'm sure I've heard "A series of...
are/were..." or similar constructions without even noticing.  But the
former one, "There have been no shortage of Xes...", struck me as
novel, although not terribly shocking as a reanalysis of "a/no
shortage(s) of" as a quantifier.

(1)  There have been no shortage of stories about returning veterans who...

(2)  There have been a series of incidents at airports...

Any thoughts (from Arnold et/aut al.)?

LH

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