Job Discussion Forums

[johnslat]

Dear arioch36,
Aw shucks - I just copied that off the Net. Nope, no PhD holder I. When some of my students call me " Doctor ", I tell them I'm not one. So, when they ask what they should call me instead, I tell them, " Well, I DO have a Masters Degree - so just call me Master ". Regarding the question on this thread, I think the best case has been made for the answer - either " have " or " has " is acceptable. There's simply not enough context to say that one is definitely correct and the other not. And context, I say again, is ALL important.
Regards,
John
P.S. I'm not so sure, though, about " English is a living language, it belongs to the people ". Since there are so many people using it in so many different ways - " standard ", " sub-standard ", " correct " and " incorrect ", if we open the floodgates, why then, what'll we teach? In a way, it's like " democracy " - 50 million Frenchmen ( or Americans, etc. ) can be and sometimes are, wrong.

[Stephen Jones]

Dear Arioch,
You can't even read. The figure of 92% preferring a singular construction does not refer to this construction. The figure given for the construction exemplified by "one of the students who has" is accepted as correct by 42%. That leaves 58% at the very least who accept the plural so it is clear even by the standards in your own post that both are correct.

It is highly doubtful if you can use the first sense of singulariy as given by the American Heritage "The quality or state of being singular" to refer to the grammatical concept. I cannot find a single example in any of half-a-dozen dictionaries of it being used in that context.

Playing the "man of the people" is one of the oldest resources of the charlatan.

And for sheer simplicty the students who have.

[arioch36]

Mr. Jones, thank you, for the confirmation. If you say you have a Phd, I will believe you.

Man of the people...no. KISS yes, definitely. Grammar that cannot be explained is worthless grammar (to all accpet those few who love to prove to other academics how smart they are), because grammar only exists to help people understand language

I find Co build to be the best dictionary, but on line I use m-w.com.

"I can not find an example of singularity being used in a grammar situation in half a dozen dictionaries". I personally don't believe you checked a half a dozen dictionaries. Maybe in Saudi you can afford to have so many dictionaries.If you did, thank you for the time you spent on my behalf. If you simply lied....

Logic...the example in the dictionary did not use it in referring to grammar, thus it is wrong to do so.....uh huh, uh huh, this from a person who has to twist and turn thing to make HAS incorrect

[xnihil]

I am amazed that one person can be so wrong about so many things.

[xnihil]

Bad News Stephen and my apologies Arioch.

After a cursory search on google, I found half a dozen uses of Singularity in the grammatical sense (often used by self-proclaimed grammaticians).

Arioch, it looks like you weren't wrong about everything.

Again, my apologies.

[Tripmaster Monkey]

OK, I'm going to be bold here. While intonation can very often change the meaning/implication of a sentence. Grammar is never influenced by implication.

As others have pointed out, the reduced version of this sentence is:

One of the students has passed the test.

It would never be:

One of the students have passed the test.


Never.

If we were going for plural, it would be:
Give me the names of some of the students who have passed the test.

Granted, when us native speakers speak, we very often break rules. It doesn't sound unnatural at all to use have. If, however, we write it down, this sentence would follow one rule only: has.

There are grammar rules by which "all" and "none" can be both plural and singular, but that doesn't apply here.


As for simple vs. present perfect, it is true that passed would be more natural. However, there are contexts in which present perfect would be used. The TOEFL exam would be a good example. Since it doesn't happen on a single date and students take it more than once, "passed" would incorrectly mean that the exam is over.

Cheers!

[xnihil]

[Shonai Ben]

xnihil:
Could I make a suggestion?Please change your avatar.It is difficult to read your posts with that eye staring at me continuosly.
Thanks bro..

[Tripmaster Monkey]

Yeah, OK. I found Bartleby independently corroborated elsewhere. Singular would be OK, but I don't have to like it...

Another argument I once heard:

I like doing the dishes in the evening.

I like to do the dishes in the evening.

Do these two sentences have the same meaning?

[Stephen Jones]

I like doing the dishes in the evening.

I like to do the dishes in the evening.

Do these two sentences have the same meaning?

They can do.

Like + gerund has the sense of enjoying doing something.

Like + infinitive has the sense of thinking it a good idea to do sometthing. However they are often interchangeable.

[Stephen Jones]

Dear Xnil,
Let's look at the first example that comes up on the Google Search.

"Two weeks IS long enough to make a decision. Ten gallons of gasoline COSTS a fortune these days. One thousand dollars WAS missing from the cash drawer last night." Notice that in each of these sentences, the speaker is not really concerned with itemizing or enumerating each individual dollar or gallon of gasoline, but is rather referring to the whole; hence, the "singularity" of these sentences.

Note that "singularity" is in inverted commas suggesting that it is an unusual - dare I say singular? :) - use of the word.

The other place where it is used is in the site of Hartford Community College. There are over 300 references to singular and 14 to singulariy of which at least two are using it in its more normal sense.

There are examples of it in various grammars of made up languages, excluding Klingon, and an example in an erudite thesis which talks of things of "the same relative singularity", which seems an oxymoron in both senses of the word.

A search on Bartelby.com /usage returns one search example out of all the pages in the seven books it uses for its reference. In contrast by the way "singular" returns 290 hits. (and singulative appears dead on the ground and returns none).

So the word can be used in that sense but is so very rarely. I went through the first fifty quotations given in Bartelby and did not come across a single sense of it being used for grammar. So the word is used in the sense Andrew used it, but rarely. I would say that the possibleiy of ambiguity is sufficent for us to prefer using "the singular" or "the singular form".

Incidentally, while looking for examples of the word "singularity" I came across more examples of the relative construction that started it all off, and they all back up the plural verb.

For example "one of a handful of teenagers who hang out at the local mall". where the singular is actually incorrect..

[xnihil]

Stephen,
I officially proclaim you the Grammar Guru or, as I like to call it, the Go To Grammatician.

Your explanations are thoughtful, clear, completly rational and fun to read. (And you onviously have too much spare time on your hands!)

However, when I search on Google, I find it used by the Uni of Del ELI grammar hotline; Monash Uni, Aust.; Uni of PA; Uni of Illinois; Uni of Edinburgh; et cetera...

From the ELI of U of Del:

[A]

In grammar school, we were taught that one should remove the prepositional phrases from a given sentence in order to come up with the correct subject-verb agreement.

Following this rule, it should actually be "Ten gallons of gasoline COST a fortune these days," and so forth. In sentences such as this one, the subject is clearly "ten gallons" and not "gasoline." However, many people do use the plural verb when speaking.

I tried to apply this rule to the original sentence:

Give me the name of one of the students who _____ passed the test.

and found that it is a different type of sentence in that the (unwritten) subject is YOU (imperative construction: you give me the name...), making "name" the direct object of the sentence. So I thought about the sentence in a way that would make "the name" the subject instead and came up with:

"The name of one of the students who passed the exam IS Robert." (singular verb)

In this case, we remove the two prepositional phrases ("of one" and "of the students"), and we become sure that the verb should agree with the subject "the name."

In conclusion, I prefer the singular verb "has" for this sentence.

Thank you,
A

[xnihil]

I am speechless. I don't even know where to begin on this one.

A,

Everything you said makes perfect sense, until your conclusion, which has nothing whatsoever to do with your argument.

Let me see if I can explain:

The sentence structure I originally provided follows this form:

[Imperative Verb + Direct Object + Indirect Object]
the indirect object can be broken up into the following pattern:

Noun + Prepositional Phrase (actually a nested phrase: of one of the students) + Relative Clause

The question we are trying to answer (actually we already have answered it) is whether the relative clause modifies the object of the first prepositional phrase (One) or the second (students).

Your argument succesfully proves that, if we changed the verb from imperative to indicative (give>is) we would need to use the singular because the word "name" is singular. That is all well and good but does not answer our question.

I hope this makes sense to you. If not, let me know and I'd be happy to explain it in greater detail.

I'm not exactly sure why I feel a complusion to continue this thread when I feel that the answer has already been provided, but it bothers me that we can have evidence and persuasive arguments but people simply go on as though they didn't exist. Maybe I just need to get out more. Grammar shouldn't mean thismuch to anyone.
If anyone really wants to understand this issue, go back to, either Stephen Jones' post or JohnSlat's. Both of whom provided excellent explainations (far better than mine).

Best regards.

J

[Tripmaster Monkey]

While it's far from a definitve grammar source, the book "Ready to Write a Paragraph" by Karen Blanchard deals with a lot of the oddities that people are bringing up. Ten gallons is a measurement. Like weight, distance, and money, measurements are always singular.

I corroborated the Bartleby grammar ruling with a University of Wisconsin online grammar reference, if anyone cares.

I'm just curious whether others concur with the gerund vs. infinitive difference in meaning. As an American, I don't believe we follow such a rule. Is this a British thing, or was I asleep when they taught that part?