[Ads-l] =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=8B1_?=in 10 women has this sexual disorder...

[Wilson Gray]

> Well, if “1 in 10 women has” it, rather than “have” it, I think the
“doesn’t” pretty much follows.

I agree. If you say, "1 in 10 women _have_," then you're applying the rule
that says the number of the verb is controlled not by the number of the
subject noun-phrase, _1_, but by the number of the noun-phrase that
immediately precedes the verb, _10 women_, the object of the preposition,
_in_. For many of us of a certain age, this is a startlingly-ungrammatical
innovation that is totally unmotivated. For the younger set, clearly, this
is _not_ an "innovation." It's simply "proper English," "as any fool kin
plainly see," in the words of Li'l Abner.
Rejuvenating the old phraseology, "1 woman in 10," won't matter.

On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 11:36 AM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > On Feb 11, 2019, at 1:07 AM, W Brewer <brewerwa at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > Reader’s Digest ad:  "1 in 10 women has this sexual disorder -- and
> doesn't
> > even know it."
> > And they doesn't even know it!?!
>
> Well, if “1 in 10 women has” it, rather than “have” it, I think the
> “doesn’t” pretty much follows.  The alternative is
>
> “I in 10 women have this sexual disorder--and don’t even know it”
>
> Also possible, I think, and maybe more natural.  On the other hand, I find
> “I woman in 10” requires the singular construal for both verbs.
>
> > At first blush, my brain says,
> > {one-in-ten} must take plural verb agreement; number attraction. After
> > all, one-in-ten women = roughly 385,728,846 women.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
-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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org