[Ads-l] "among the data"?

[Dan Goncharoff]

I don't have a problem with "among the data". I can justify it, and I don't
see a better choice.
On Feb 8, 2015 8:36 PM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "among the data"?
>
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>
> I'm usually an old geezer about "data" being treated as singular, and
> therefore wouldn't object to it being used as a plural.  But somehow
> in "whose personal information was among the data accessed in the
> attack", data doesn't work for me as a plural.
>
> Perhaps because it doesn't agree with "information"?  That is, I take
> "information" as a mass noun,* here given a singular verb form, and
> therefore expect "data" to act as a mass noun also.  And as I
> originally said, "among" doesn't work well for me with mass nouns.
>
> If I understood Larry correctly, he finds "among the data" unusual
> also.  Perhaps we were brought up among the same time among the same
> locality.
>
> * I see "informations" does exist, but apparently in the sense of
> "more than one item that informs".  And, except in usage related to
> law (e.g., "criminal informations"), not in the last century or two.
>
> Joel
>
> At 2/8/2015 07:20 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> >Then I'm still in knee-pants.
> >
> >But at first not even I could guess what was "wrong" with the usage.
> >
> >Perhaps Joel is just young at heart.
> >
> >JL
> >
> >On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
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> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> > > Subject:      Re: "among the data"?
> > >
> > >
> >
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> > >
> > > On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > which I find unusual
> > >
> > >
> > > I count *you* among the young, too, Larry. ;-), as I'm now
> uncomfortably
> > > close to my 80's.
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > -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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> >"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
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