Korean Job Discussion Forums

jtpe · Joined: 05 Mar 2007 Location: Daegu

This sentence is incorrect? "The merchandising of 100s of toys WERE in demand." It should be changed to was b/c it's relating to the merchandising, right?

Just want to make sure....
Please give ur professional input.
Thanks

Ya-ta Boy · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994

faster · Joined: 03 Sep 2006

"Merchandising" as a gerund is indeed the subject, so the verb should be singular, but yeah, the sentence makes no sense. I'm not sure how "merchandising" can be "in demand."

bejarano-korea · Joined: 13 Dec 2006

To use 'were' instead of 'was' is a colloquialism popular in England though if you use 'were' your students are going to be confused.

I would stick to 'was' even though it is acceptable to ue 'were'

Woland · Joined: 10 May 2006 Location: Seoul

I'm with Ya-ta Boy and faster here.

I suspect, too, that some other word than 'merchandising' was intended (or that the whole beginning is a memorized chunk), but still, any substitute I can think of doesn't make a sensible sentence of this one. Somebody's trying out vocabulary that they don't really know.

dutchy pink · Joined: 06 Feb 2007 Location: Incheon

Yeah, I don't thing 'merchandising' is a word. merchandise is a noun. If you were slick, you could pull it off, but not in that sentence.

monkeh · Joined: 05 Sep 2007

It's definitely a word, people get paid to merchandise things (including toys) - the proposed sentence just seems a bit off.

Been There, Taught That · Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:19 am Post subject:

1. Yes, the sentence is a 'was'

2. Yes, merchandising can be in demand, if anyone chooses to make it so in a sentence or conversation, or whatever. It just has to make sense grammatically, and it does, when it is 'was'

3. Yes, merchandising is a word, and was and has been, ever since the verbifying of nouns became a cool thing to do, which was longer ago than is rememberable, and is what phrase-coining is all about

4. But 100s is not properly placed here. That works if you're counting money or groups of 100 or things...barely. Hundreds of reasons, all particular and personal, but you can make up reasons for doing what you do in English. You can't easily set up new style and grammar rules.

Hopelessly Human · Joined: 03 Oct 2006

This might make more sense:

The merchandising of hundreds of toys was demanded.

Or if you still need to show that the toys were in demand, and were demanded to be merchandised:

The merchandising of hundreds of toys that were in demand was demanded.

How about:

He demanded that hundreds of toys that were in demand be demanded to be merchandised.

He demanded that hundreds of toys that were in demand be demanded to be merchandised by the demandee of the demander.

Okay, that was fun but it's getting late and I've wasted way too much time on this. I demand that someone demand my time back.

moosehead · Joined: 05 May 2007

bacasper · Joined: 26 Mar 2007

I'm with Ya-ta, faster and Woland here.

Remember, we must teach our students to not only speak grammatically correctly but logically also. It is not logical that mechandising is in demand but rather the toys were.

Perhaps what is meant is something like, "We engaged in the merchandising of hundreds of toys that were in demand."

"Merchandising" as a gerund could be the subject of a sentence, and as such it would be singular. Just put it in the proper context.

Been There, Taught That · Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 6:15 pm Post subject: Re: Grammar ? for all you experts

faster · Joined: 03 Sep 2006

Been There, Taught That · Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 10:38 pm Post subject:

As a purist, then, I can only say what I said before. Grammar- and style-wise, you can agree to and understand things as you will, but the logic of the whole always wins out. Using a singular marker in a plural context just can't be justified, no matter how popularized. I don't consider that 'number' trumps its article, but as a noun can only be dictated by it. Nouns have a slave-master relationship to articles.

L2 learners can't use the language like natives, and shouldn't be taught that anything goes. And however 'flexible (lackadaisical)' English can be made to be, that flexibility is only good as a curiousity and a goal. Convention is impossible to bring across as a norm, because it's never uniform across the board.

faster · Joined: 03 Sep 2006

There's no such thing as "purism" in English. As Gerald Parshall wrote (about John Adams' proposed English purity law), "it would be like giving a courtesan a chastity belt for her birthday." English is a mongrel, a tramp, and many of her "rules" are but superimpositions of unrelated rules leftover from Latin, a very different language (example: the misapprehension that it's inadmissible to end a clause or sentence with a preposition).

That said, the "purist" point of view is that "a number of" is plural. I challenge you to find a single style or grammar guide that indicates otherwise (except in rare instances such as "a number of this magnitude requires five bytes to store" -- note that in this usage, "a number of" is not a quantifier).

I urge you to seek out some expert opinions.

Here's one:

http://www.grammartips.homestead.com/number.html

Others can be found pretty easily with this search string:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=usage+%22a+number+of%22+plural&btnG=Google+Search