Snow

[Baker, John]

        MWDEU's examples are "Ten dollars is all I have left," "Two
miles is as far as they can walk," and "Two thirds of the area is under
water."  In such cases, a singular verb seems far preferable, although
you can contrive examples such as "I came to town with forty silver
dollars, and now ten dollars are all I have left."

        On reflection, I believe that the analysis given by Arnold
Zwicky (and, posting earlier, Larry Horn) is superior to the one I had
given (not that that should be surprising).  I had suggested that a
singular verb could be used if the subject were considered to be a
single expectation.  That doesn't hold up very well with sentences such
as *"Thirteen crates of oranges is expected," although it again is
probably possible to contrive an example allowing a singular verb.


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Arnold Zwicky
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 11:04 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.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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