Tuesday December 25, 2012
Uncountable?
By FADZILAH AMIN
Do you say, ‘None of them are terrorists’ or ‘None of them is a terrorist’?
It is sometimes difficult to determine whether the subject of a clause or sentence is singular, plural or uncountable. What it is, decides what determiners can be used before it and the form of the verb it agrees with.
Take the common word “clothes” for instance. It is a plural noun without a singular form. In this respect, it resembles several other nouns that exist only in the plural form, like “goods” or “premises”, for instance. “Cloth”, “good” and “premise” respectively are certainly not their singular forms.
While a few determiners can be used before such nouns, we don’t use a number before any of them. Thus we don’t say: “She owns 100 clothes/goods/premises.” Also, some determiners are used in positive statements, while others are usually used in negative statements and questions.
Reader L.M.I. asked whether it is correct to use the determiner “many” in “I bought many clothes ...” My answer is, it is better to say, “I bought a lot of clothes ...” (informally) or “I bought a large number of clothes ...” (formally). The determiner “many” is usually used in negative statements or questions as in “She doesn’t have many clothes.” or “Did you buy many clothes?”
Clothes and durians
However, it can be used with “as”, “so” and “too” in positive statements, such as “You can try on as many clothes as you like in this department store” or “They had so many clothes (that) they had to give some away” or “She is trying to pack too many clothes into that little suitcase.”
Another reader, Lee, asked whether the verb in sentences like the following should agree with “dozen” or “durians”:
1. “A dozen durians were sold yesterday.”
2. “How much does/do a dozen durians cost?”
3. “There is/are a dozen durians in the basket.”
In these sentences, “a dozen” is used as a plural determiner and the subject of those sentences is the plural noun phrase “a dozen durians”. The verb should therefore be plural, since it should agree with the plural noun phrase. Similarly, if a number like “a hundred” is used instead of a dozen in the above sentences, we use a plural verb with it, e.g. “A hundred durians were sold yesterday.”
An interesting question, raised by reader Lim Hian, is whether a subject containing “none of” should take a singular or a plural verb. “None of” means “not any of” or “not one of”. “None of” is usually followed by an uncountable noun or a plural noun or pronoun. If it is followed by an uncountable noun, the verb should be singular, as in: “None of his charisma was inherited by his children.” or “None of the advice has done her any good.”
However, if “none of” is followed by a plural noun or pronoun, the verb could be either singular or plural. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2004, revised 2009) in a note on usage, disagrees with those people who insist that “none” can only take a singular verb, saying that “none has been used for around a thousand years with both a singular and a plural verb, depending on the context and emphasis needed.”
Here are some contemporary examples of “none of” with a plural noun or pronoun and taking either a singular or a plural verb. They are all from the same British national newspaper The Guardian:
1. “Maybe None of Them Are Terrorists” (headline of an article on March 31, 2004)
2. “Stephen Fry has adroitly managed a vast group portrait of cameos and elegant little turns, but none of them is on screen long enough to make much of an impression ....” (from a film review, October 3, 2003)
3. “Behind the women, Katz has placed a picture of a picture – his portrait of Schuyler: none of the women is looking at it.” (from an article about an artist whose paintings were being exhibited in the UK, May 4 2012)
4. “None of the children are getting the treatment [in Britain] that is the best available treatment.” (from a health article, August 24 2012)
Agreeable verbs!
Lim Hian also asked whether the subject “Not only … but also…” should take a singular or plural verb. The answer is that the verb should agree with the noun or pronoun that comes just before it. Thus, the correct sentences are:
1. “Not only Steve but also Monica has agreed to participate.”
2. “Not only Steve but also the others have agreed to do it.”
This rule is similar to that for “either ... or ...” and “neither ...nor ...”
However, if “All but + noun” is the subject, the verb is plural when a countable noun is used. But it is singular when an uncountable noun is used. This can be seen in:
1. “All but one of Syria’s disparate opposition groups have agreed to unite behind the Syrian National Council. (BBC News website, March 28, 2012)
2. “The book of life is brief/And once a page is read,/All but love is dead.” (from lyrics of Don McLean’s And I Love You So.) You can hear the song at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ5P2TLpr1o&feature=related
Finally, I would like to address the question of a reader with the pseudonym “In Doubt”. She asked: Is this sentence correct on the singular verbs used? I am guided by the singular noun “a student”:
“Much to our unexpected delight, we suddenly see a student improves in his colouring skills, develops an ‘overnight’ interest towards craft work, displays accuracy in writing, produces faster and neater handwriting, changes from a not-so-positive attitude to better behaviour and interacts freely with others whilst maintaining all the naiveness of childhood!”
My answer to that is you should look at the subject of the whole sentence, which is “we” and the main verb “see” which is followed by an object “a student” and a series of verbs which should be in the –ing form, not the singular form. I have italicised the important words. The sentence should therefore read:
“Much to our unexpected delight, we suddenly see a student improving in his colouring skills, developing an ‘overnight’ interest towards craft work, displaying accuracy in writing, producing faster and neater handwriting, changing from having a not-so-positive attitude to better behaviour and interacting freely with others whilst maintaining all the naiveness of childhood!”
Only a few verbs besides see can be used in the structure “subject + main verb + object + -ing verb.” Among them are hear, notice, watch and observe – all verbs of perception.
> Fadzilah Amin taught English literature at university, but after retirement, started teaching English language. Mind Our English is published once a week on Tuesdays. For comments or enquiries on English usage, please contact the writer at fedela7@yahoo.co.uk
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