Coach Paterno and the syntactic blind alley

[Dan Goncharoff]

I thought we were talking about "blind alley" constructions.

This is clearly (to me, at least) just a common error, and one that has
nothing to do with a blind-alley. Thanks for confirming that.

DanG


On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Coach Paterno and the syntactic blind alley
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Nov 10, 2011, at 7:42 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>
> > Why is "one of my friends' fathers" something to talk about?
> >=20
> > I have many friends. They all have fathers. Collectively they are =
> correctly
> > called my friends' fathers. When I want to refer to one member of this
> > group, that person is "one of my friends' fathers".
> >=20
> > What am I missing??
> > DanG
>
> You're referring to a single father.  I look at this as the Saxon =
> counterpart of the prepositional (non-Saxon?) construction which is not =
> "the fathers of one of my friends" but rather "the father of one of my =
> friends".  Given that we say "one of my friends' fathers is here" and =
> not "one of my friends' fathers are here" and that we pronominalize "one =
> of my friends' fathers" as "he" or as "they", this is clearly singular =
> grammatically, whence the apparent mismatch between singular referent =
> and plural form.  It may not bother you but it sometimes bothers me, =
> especially since the alternative--"one of my friends' father"--is =
> totally impossible, as I think we agree.
>
> In fact, though, not *everyone* agrees.  Cf.
> Q:  This is a tricky one (for me at least).  Does anybody know which =
> sentence is correct and why?
>
> 1) One of my friends' mothers has a boat.
>
> 2) One of my friends' mother has a boat.
>
> A:  The 2nd one is correct.  "Mother" has to be singular as you're =
> talking about one special mother only: The mother of one of your =
> friends.
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
> These are actually quite common.  Thus, to take a few of many (even if =
> it's not really the 4.1 million hits Google estimates):
>
> Here in the past 2 months one of my friends mother died.
> One of my friends mother suffer with Transverse Myelitis
> I am worried as one of my friends mother have died due to cervical =
> cancer. (interesting agreement!)
> Or so I was told by one of my friends mother's  (interesting =
> apostrophe!)
>
> In fact "one of my friends mother" (ignoring the apostrophe, as writers =
> usually seem to do) appears to be much more common than "one of my =
> friends mothers". And fathers are similar.  Can we really claim that =
> speakers/writers don't have a problem with this construction?
>
> LH
> >=20
> >=20
> > On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >=20
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Subject:      Re: Coach Paterno and the syntactic blind alley
> >>=20
> >> =
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> -----
> >>=20
> >> On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Laurence Horn =
> <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> >> wrote:
> >>> one of my friend's father(s)
> >>=20
> >> Is there any reason even to try to get out of this one? You hear it =
> or
> >> read it - IME, usually in the form, "one of my friends' fathers" -
> >> everywhere, thousands of times a day. Being concerned with this is
> >> like being concerned that the number of speakers who still say
> >> "EK-skwizzit" and not "ek-SKWIZZit" is vanishingly small.
> >>=20
> >>> either she or I am/is/are going
> >>=20
> >> In high school, ca. 1950, I was taught a scrip for this one: in this
> >> kind of construction, whatever NP follows _or_ controls the number of
> >> the verb. Hence,
> >>=20
> >> either she or _I _ AM going
> >>=20
> >> Needles to say, after having (semi-)automatically applied this rule
> >> for more than sixty years, I now feel that it's perfectly "natural."
> >>=20
> >>>=20
> >>=20
> >>=20
> >>=20
> >> --
> >> -Wilson
> >> -----
> >> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> >> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> >> -Mark Twain
> >>=20
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>=20
> >=20
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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