one of those who... (was: Jungle gyms and monkey bars)

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 8:50 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: one of those who... (was: Jungle gyms and monkey bars)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On May 3, 2012, at 8:36 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>>
>> On May 3, 2012, at 8:05 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
>>> Speaking of discrepancies, I have the strong feeling that I may well
>>> be the only native-speaker of English who "knows" that the "proper"
>>> forms are
>>>
>>> a) "… _ONE_ [of the few who still] _distinguishES_ …"
>>>
>>> as opposed to, e.g.
>>>
>>> b) "… _SOME_ [of the few who still] _distinguish_ …"
>>>
>>> I've become consciously aware of this so recently - I notice it in
>>> literature, but not in speech - that I don't know whether it's dialect
>>> - a black thing; you would't understand - or idiolect - even *I* don't
>>> understand how I came to have these structures, but *not*
>>>
>>> c) "… [one of the] FEW [who still] _distinguish_ …"
>>>
>>> which I used above only as a sop to my readers.
>>> --
>>>
>> Why isn't it "…one [of [the FEW who still distinguish…]]"
>>
I have no idea. When I started to notice the "wrong" way in print, I
was eventually able to parse <har! har!> that a person *should* see it
that way and, if it mattered, I could probably train myself,
1984-style, even to *believe* that the "wrong" way is really the right
way. But, it's like color-blindness. I understand perfectly well why
other people see red, but, nevertheless, I see blue.

>> Notice the possibility of "Of the few who still distinguish…, I am one"
>>
>> Could you say "Of the few who still distinguishes…, I am one"?
>>
Hm. Very likely not.

>> Or consider "he's one of the guys who are surrounding the house"; could you say "he's one of the guys who is surrounding the house"?
>>
Not only could, but would, without giving it a second thought.

>>
>> (Granted I'm only constructing a syntactic argument or two to prove the correctness of my brute intuition, but still.)
>>
> P.S. Â Here's another, on behalf of my plural agreement brigade:
>
> a) He's one of the many clones we manufactured who are indistinguishable from each other. Â  vs.

> b) *He's one of the many clones we manufactured who is indistinguishable from each other.
>
b) was the one. Till I got to the "from each other" for the second
time. a) is "correct," but, somehow, it kinda bites the big one, Were
I an English teacher, I'd suggest a re-write because, as it stands, a)
is, to me, "clumsy" or some such. But,

He's one of the many clones we manufactured who is indistinguishable

and

He's one of the many clones we manufactured who are indistinguishable

both work for me.

Like, "He is indistinguishable [from the other clones] and "They are
indistinguishable [from each other]."

Or something. You know how weird language gets, when you try to think about it.

--
-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

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