Snow

[Jonathan Lighter]

In reply to Mark, "lot" is singular when it refers to soup. In other words,
when applied to non-count rather than count nouns.

JL

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Snow
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> (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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