non-head nominals and number agreement

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:02 PM -0400 7/25/07, sagehen wrote:
>  >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
>>------------
>  Brits at one time (and perhaps still, though I don't remember hearing it
>in quite a while) used plural verbs with collective nouns, as in "The
>government are..." &c.    If "shortage" is a collective representing a
>group of  (non-existent) stories ......!   :-)

Somehow I suspect "The shortage surprise me" is far less likely.  I
think it's the reinterpretation as non-head (as in (2)) rather than
the British collective (which shows no sign of heading across the
pond) that's at issue here.

>  We've seen " a series" used for "several" recently;  if that's legit, I
>suppose this syntax would be acceptable.

That's what it must be, but somehow I find the plural more surprising
with "no shortage of stories" than with "a series of incidents",
although others evidently differ.  In any case, Charlie G is far from
alone--I see there are no shortage of google hits, 515 to be (more or
less) exact, for "There have been no shortage of", followed by such
plural head nouns as "disasters", "public postings", "emotional
moments", "sure fire solutions", "proposals", and so on.  (Not to
mention another 60K for "There are no shortage of...", quite a
healthy number although it's still outpolled by the 480K for "There
are a series of..."  I guess it's just my old-fogeyism that's
showing.)

>I wouldn't use either (1) or (2) in serious writing.

You're invited to check out those google hits to determine how
serious the writing was intended to be...

LH

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