Snow

[Arnold Zwicky]

(i've reorganized the postings in this thread to put them into
temporal sequence.)

> On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 7:51 PM, Bill Palmer
> <w_a_palmer at bellsouth.net>wrote:
>
>> Bianca Solorzano of CBS News reported this evening that "13 inches of
>> snow are expected in New York."
>>
>> The expectations are for what: inches or snow?
>>
>> "Is" or "are"?


> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf
> Of Jonathan Lighter
> Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2009 10:26 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Snow
>
> The object of a preposition cannot be the subject of a sentence. So
> "inches," not "snow," is (not "are") the subject, and "are" (not "is")
> is correct.
>


On Mar 1, 2009, at 8:06 PM, John Baker wrote:

>        I would think that the subject could be either "inches" (in
> which case "are" would be correct) or "13 inches of snow,"
> considered as
> a single expectation (in which case "is" would be correct).  MWDEU, at
> 56, seems to prefer the singular verb, though I am comfortable with
> either.

MWDEU's examples are not as complex as "13 inches of snow".  what
makes this NP complex is that there are two possible analyses for it
(corresponding to the two interpretations John Baker sees): one in
which "13 inches" is the head and "of snow" is a complement to it, and
one in which "snow" is the head and "13 inches" is a quantity
determiner (requiring that the head be marked by the preposition
"of").  in the first, the NP is plural, because its head is plural; in
the second, the NP is singular, because its head (the mass noun
"snow") is singular.

like John Baker, i'm comfortable with either, though some
circumstances would favor one over the other.

arnold

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