One of those who
From reader Adam Drew this morning,
a posting
(of 6/1/06) he found on the Defective Yeti website:
Grammarama
I posted this question to a discussion group and it incited a veritable
brawl:
Which is grammatically correct: "I have
had sex with each and every member of Avenged Sevenfold, one of the
bands that [is|are] part of Ozzfest 2006."
No consensus was reached, so we can settle the matter once and for all,
right here on this humble little webpage. Fight!
In the seven days since then the responses have piled up
alarmingly. Some people said only the plural was correct, period,
and one of them cited Bryan Garner (who is inflexible on this point in
his
Dictionary of Modern American
Usage) in support. At least one reader was disbelieving
that anyone could
EVER use the singular here.
Others maintained that only the singular was grammatical. Several
said that both were possible; one of these helpfully and painstakingly
provided sentence diagrams for each of the variants. Pandemonium
reigned. Or maybe even rained.
This is a venerable controversy -- people have complained about
the singular variant since at least 1770 -- and this variant goes back
even farther, at least to Shakespeare.
(The plural variant is attested in
the 10th century.) What's interesting here is that passionate
discussions on points of grammar, usage, and style break out in all
sorts of places that have nothing in particular to do with language:
child-care forums, techie mailing lists, lgbt newsgroups, for
instance. People
CARE. And the issues that
exercise them so much are mostly famous ones in the Ling Biz, like this
one, issues that are treated with some care in
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English
Usage -- a volume that scarcely anyone outside of the Ling Biz
seems to know about. Forget Strunk & White. Go for
MWDEU.
If you look in
MWDEU under
one of those who you will find
capsule histories of the variation in usage and of the controversy
about it among the various "authorities" on grammar, usage, and
style. The article observes that each variant appears with some
frequency, including by respected writers in formal contexts, and that
often both appear in the work of a single writer (Joseph Addison in
The Spectator, for instance).
MWDEU ultimately takes the
position of John S. Kenyon in a 1951
American
Speech article, that (in the dictionary's words) "it is simply a
matter of which is to be master" -- the singular
one or the plural NP (
those,
the bands, whatever) that follows
it. This is in fact the position of "Umrain Zero", who produced
those sentence diagrams. Both variants are ok, and they might
even be conveying slightly different things (with greater discourse
salience of the one thing, with singular agreement, or of the reference
class from which this thing is drawn, with plural agreement).
The advice literature on grammar, usage, and style is on the whole
inimical to alternative expressions with the "same meaning", generally
advising that one of the alternatives be banned entirely (as in this
case) or else relegated to conversation and informal writing (as in the
case of
a lot of vs.
much, which I've recently written
about
here).
There are two problems here. First, again and again it turns out
(as Dwight Bolinger used to explain so often) that the alternatives are
not truly free variants, but convey different meanings or discourse
statuses. Second, free variation (without semantic or
discourse-structuring concomitants) is still a great thing to have
around, indicating all sorts of other things: your mood, your persona,
your attitude towards the people you're talking or writing to, your
social group membership, and so on. This is true even if we
confine ourselves to the standard language. We can do more things
if we have more choices.
So I say: try to steer clear of people who want to impoverish your set
of choices. And don't go around constraining other people's sets
of choices, especially if they might be doing something subtle with
them. Your life will be calmer, less stressful, and less
contentious. Go out and get (as Geoff Pullum advised
here)
a copy of
MWDEU, and apply it
soothingly when you feel a fit of grammar-wrangling coming on.
(Geoff recommended the concise version, but I usually suggest that
people spring for the full volume. Note: I am in no way
associated with the Merriam-Webster company.)
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at June 7, 2006 08:59 PM