Note that the rules for European English are different; European English has a class of nouns that are morphologically singular, but formally plural. We say "Congress has ..." and they say "Parliament have ...". These nouns are mostly "corporate" nouns with arguably plural semantics. American English doesn't have any such corporate plurals. On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Adam P. Goucher <apgoucher@gmx.com> wrote:
Yes, you would say `a sesquichicken lays ...' not `a sesquichicken lay ...'.
-- Adam P. Goucher
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2014 at 1:41 PM From: "Allan Wechsler" <acwacw@gmail.com> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [math-fun] sesqui-imponderables
Committing my usual error of wading into a frivolous conversation with my Serious Hat on...
Number in grammar is not a mathematical concept; it's a purely formal one. The "number" of a noun phrase, and hence the verb form you have to pick to agree with it, is determined by the formal structure of the phrase and of its component words, *not* by the meaning of the phrase. Now, different people can have form-agreement rules that differ in various details. For me, "A chicken and a half lays ..." feels wrong (even without the subjunctivizing "if"), so the phrase *is* plural for me. If the subject isn't plural for Gosper and Andy, it must be because they are (in some sense) parsing it differently, so that it has singular *structure*. My guess is (and I can't be certain, because I don't have their linguistic intuitions to guide me) that for them, the and-a-half construction converts the noun phrase from a "count noun" to a "mass noun"; mass nouns always parse as singular in American English.
On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 5:24 AM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 1:18 AM, Andy Latto <andy.latto@pobox.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 12:49 PM, Adam P. Goucher <apgoucher@gmx.com> wrote:
1. ((a (chicken)) and (a (half))), not (a ((chicken) and (a (half)))).
That doesn't explain why it isn't plural; compound subjects of the form "A and B" are normally plural.
Frog and Toad are Friends.
Andy
So >1 isn't essential for plural, else "Two half-wits writes a grammar book, ..."
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