Dubious Agreement (Part II)

Frances Peck
(Language Update, Volume 4, Number 4, 2007, page 19)

One of the beauties of jazz, they say, is that historically so many of its musicians have played by ear. What sounds right seems to have worked for them, jazz musicians being some of the most gifted and nimble around.

But what about writing by ear? True, a finely tuned ear is indispensable to the poet, who relies on sound and cadence the way some of us rely on sentences and paragraphs. And an ear for dialogue can be the making of a fiction writer. In the workplace, though, where mechanical precision often matters more than flair, writing by ear can be a little like wearing stiletto heels: striking but not altogether . . . correct.

What does your ear, for instance, tell you about this passage?

If you identified three errors in subject-verb agreement, congratulations. Your brain has just triumphed over your ear. But have you spotted the right three errors?

There is, there are

First there’s what we hear:

Then there’s what is correct—namely, none of the above.

The word there to many people looks and sounds like a singular subject. Is it a singular subject? That’s a trick question. There, when it’s teamed up with the verb to be, is not a subject at all. It’s an anticipatory subject, a word that carries little or no meaning and that precedes the real subject, which appears later.

In the sentences above, the real subjects are shows, performers and sandwiches. All are plural, which means the verbs should all be are. As should the first verb in our mountain-climbing passage.

Did your ear fool you? Don’t be surprised if it did. Mistakes with there, and particularly with there’s, the contracted form, are multiplying like derricks in the Alberta oil patch. These errors have long popped up in speech, but now they’re spreading to printed material, including, heaven help us, edited text. In recent months I’ve read three books (two fiction, one non-fiction) from leading publishers in which the singular there’s appears with plural subjects—not just once or twice, but all through the book.

Each and every one

Indefinite pronouns—words like everyone and no one, somebody and nothing—are pronouns whose antecedents (the nouns they replace) are hard to narrow down. Many indefinite pronouns are grammatically singular, so team up with singular verbs. Recognizing the singular pronouns is for the most part easy. Many of them come with the decidedly singular endings -one, -body and -thing.

Four indefinite pronouns, however, do not fit this mould. Each, every, either and neither are always singular, even when linked to plural words. Even when the singular sounds clunky.

That brings us to error number two in the climbing passage. The second sentence should begin Each of the routes is technically advanced.

None

What about the third error? Did you think it was none of them have?

Different people hear different things with none. Some people are pretty sure that none of them is plural and takes the plural verb have. Others, especially those of a certain age or anyone educated in a conventional milieu, may hear the ghostly hectoring of schoolmarms: "None is always singular."

The fact is, none has morphed. Once steadfastly singular, like no one and nothing, it now goes both ways, singular or plural, depending on the word it combines with. When tied to a plural word (like them), none is plural. When tied to a singular word, it’s singular: none of the driveway has been shovelled. In this way none has become like its opposites, all and some, both of which change their number depending on what they’re linked with.

What’s with who, that and which?

That brings us to the real error number three. The last sentence in the climbing passage begins But Thor Stoutleg is one of those climbers who insists that every mountain can be conquered. Even the keenest ear is deaf to the agreement error here: the second verb should be plural, insist.

If your jaw just dropped, you’re not alone. There’s a whole world of English writers with their chins on their chests. We’ve finally come to the most common agreement problem in the language—how to treat the relative pronouns who, that and which.

The trouble with these pronouns is that they (like some, all and none) change their number according to their antecedent. The trick, then, is to correctly identify the antecedent. That sounds straightforward, but, like so many things that combine the ear and grammar, it’s not.

In sentences like the Thor example, which say that someone is one . . . who, it’s easy to get sidetracked by the word one and to think that everything in its wake should be singular. In fact, the antecedent of who is climbers, not one. The sentence is saying that there are climbers (plural) out there who insist (plural) that every mountain can be conquered, and Thor is one of them (plural). Put another way, the sentence is saying Those climbers, of whom Thor is one, insist . . . .

Besides who, watch out for that and which, which cause just as many agreement errors.

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