Please tell me if this topic has already been "done to death" by the group.

I have been watching and bewailing, for about 15 years, the steadily increasing tendency for (mostly) Americans to make the verb of a sentence agree in number with the "nearest noun to the left" -- rather than the subject of the sentence.

The latest egregious example of this came from a linguist(!) being interviewed on NPR, who said: "Whatever the influence of the mass media are ...".

A linguist! It's interesting that -- unlike many -- he knew that "media" is plural, but he then misapplied that knowledge to pluralize the verb that should have been agreeing with the singular "influence".

Now, I consider myself a lapsed prescriptionist; I was one, I must confess, up to about 10-15 years ago. I used to get into a lovely high dudgeon reading Safire's irate denunciations concerning such earth-shaking topics as split infinitives ("to boldly go"), ending sentences with prepositions (until I came across Churchill's hilarious retort), "'ain't' ain't in the dictionary", "irregardless", "hopefully" (fills a need, I now admit: no one's going to go around saying "It is to be hoped that ..."; cf. German 'hoffentlich') double negatives (mandatory in Spanish, BTW), etc.

Languages change, constantly. Language is not always "logical". No problem.

But.

There has to be some kind of REASON why a certain change is taking place; it has to serve some end -- so in that extended sense it has to be logical.

What on earth is served by having a verb agree in number with the nearest preceding (pro)noun? Nothing that I can fathom; rather, potentially useful information is being destroyed, red herrings are being strewn in the path of the reader/listener.

Since I hear/read Spanish and German regularly, and Canadian and British English, I can report that these kinds of (and similar) errors are MUUUCH less common outside the US&A.

Call that theory the "whatever ..." attitude in American culture.

Another theory is that the very concept of grammatical objects having to agree in number has been weakened for PC reasons: so that we could say things like "Will the student that left their algebra book in the cafeteria ...". Is this a collectively owned textbook?

*** New (but related) topic ***

This gets into those pesky personal/possessive pronouns: he, she, him, her, his, hers. And I know that's been bruited about recently in another forum. Nevertheless, my USD $0.02.

It's truly a shame that no non-clumsy solution has been found (as "firefighter" for "fireman", an actual improvement). As a translator, let me tell you I have wrestled with this, daily, for over 10 years. I wind up with a mix of solutions; my commonest one is recasting entire sentences from singular to plural ("The patient puts his ..." >> "Patients put their ...") -- which my clients have complained about, at times. Sigh.

I envy German because its pronouns are based on grammatical -- not human -- gender (yesyes I know: 'gender' is ONLY grammatical), and it's easy to come up with sentences that refer to a male as a she ("Diese Person hat IHR Geld verloren."), a female as neuter ("Das Mädchen ist hungrig weil ES nicht gegessen hat.") and so on. German has another out, as well: "man" -- which does NOT mean "Mann", man, but rather is equivalent to our "one". The trouble is, one is considered quaint and stuffy if one overuses "one" (see what I mean?). So that's out.

Spanish is SO deeply "macho sexist" that the male default gender couldn't be changed without altering the grammar beyond recognition. (Interesting example: if you're addressing a dozen (or more) people, of which only one is male, you have to address them with the default male gender; only if there are NO males can you use female forms.)

Also, Spanish has, in one case, a built-in gender hider: "The tourist lost HIS wallet" > "El turista perdió SU billetero." THIS is what English needs -- but even this would only solve the possessive pronoun problem.

But poor ole Murrcan English. I honestly wish this issue had never been raised, because I now no longer can look on "he" innocently. I wish we could simply declare it a linguistic fossil (like 'lord' and 'lady') and agree not to be offended by its use, devoting our eneriges instead to more substantive issues such as equal pay for equal work, equal representation at all levels of employment, etc. etc.

The proposed solutions all founder if they have to be used more than 2 times in the same sentence: "He or she can pick up his or her refund after he or she has presented his or her receipt." The customer can pick up the customer's refund after the customer has presented the customer's receipt." "One can pick up one's refund after one has presented one's receipt."

And "s/he" falls to pieces in the above example: "S/he can pick up his/her refund after s/he has presented his/her receipt."

How about the notion of "equal time" for he & she?: "He can pick up her refund after she presents his receipt." Yah sure.

Plurals? "The customer gets their refund after they present their receipt." Didja see the cute little switch the verbs had to make, from singular to plural, even though they both refer to "customer"? And why is this one customer getting those other people's refund?

If this issue will not go away, then let's create some completely new words for she/he, his/her, his/hers. Any suggestions? Remember: gotta be short; can't usurp an existing word; can't use letters that might seem to be referring to -- and by left-right priority preferring -- males or females (such as m f h s).

Or we could use "it". We already do: "The baby spit up its food."

I've gotta be honest: what bugs me the most is the idea which is thereby introduced: rules don't matter much, we can wing it, whatever's in the neighborhood. Americans especially don't need extra reasons to be sloppy -- sorry, casual.

There. I've outed myself. I'm an uptight, humorless prig pining for the paradigmatic past, when all was sweetness and rationality.

Oh well, it had to come out someday.

David

Oh dear little frog you are in a state aren't you?
If only I had the time right now to answer you. Sadly I don't and by the time I do others will have done so adequately.
Ah well, I look forward to the answers at least.

Oh, my.

"Whatever the influence of the media are ...". I think that this is the result of hypercorrection, like the similar phenomenon of "Between you and I". The feeling that "the media is" is so horribly wrong, that people correct a situation in which, this construction would be correct. I think people have been making these kinds of mistakes for a while. But, you're welcome to stress out and blame the '60s, rock 'n' roll, drugs, and promiscuity if you want to.

We just talked about the use of they for a singular, non-gender-specific pronoun the other dat in a different thread. It's not as new as many assume: it's been being used for at least 375 or more years before the USA existed as a political entity. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and many other writers have used the construction. Many deplore it. So be it. I think that this is a different kind of "mistake". I think that using they and its various forms in this sense is correct and has been for over 600 years.

And here's my pet peeve. Presciptivists have been peddling their lame-ass brand of linguistics for a little over 250 years or so now. And I'm sick of it. Many of their fiats have little to do with grammar and more to do with usage. Splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions is just fine and dandy, and if you don't want to use a serial comma, good for you. Just don't use grammar or logic as your excuse. Use personal preference. My personal theory is that prescriptivists were brutalized by Miss Thistlebottom in the 3rd grade and their only way of coping was to go on railing and ranting and bitching and kvetching against the degradation of language by people who weren't brutalized by their grammar teachers or who wiped their noses, pulled up their britches, and got on with life and language. Other times, I feel that they just go on and on to personally annoy me, but luckily I don't get into that dark place often.

I know I can't convince you. I know you know you're right, and I'm wrong. A priori wrong, because I studied linguistics at university. It doesn't matter that I usually write something approaching standard American English. My very existence allows for the loosening of god-given rules and the diabolic chaos attendent in descriptive linguistics per se.

Old English used to have about four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative), and sometimes three numbers (singular, dual, and plural), but present-day English has no cases (except some archaic bits left over in the pronominal system), and only two numbers. Some will argue that the possessive or genitive still exists and others will say that it doesn't. The point is there has been a significant reduction of numbers of cases and inflected forms in English, and guess what. Present-day English is no less, and many would argue that it is more, an expressive language than Old English. Same sort of thing happened between Latin and the Romance languages. The problem with Spanish su that you mention goes back to Latin. Possessive pronouns agree with the gender of the noun they qualify, and not with the sex of the anaphoric noun. End of the world, the sky is falling. Some languages didn't get rid of cases and inflected forms. For example, the Slavic languages still have a whole bunch of cases (6 or 7) etc. Some century they may get rid of them. But for all their cases, they don't have a definite article. No the there in Moskow or Wroclaw. And Latin didn't either, but its daughter languages developed one: all of them. Greek had one, but Sanskrit didn't. Which language is better, more expressive, more grammatical? These kinds of questions don't really have an answer because they're meaningless. Danish and Romanian have postposed definite articles. Weird or just the way those languages work. I've stuck with examples from Indo-European languages because those are the ones I've studied carefully. When you look at some of the indigenous languages of North and South America, you find that they do things a lot differently from how we do it. Not wrong, just different.

There. I've run out of steam.

Thanks for the clarification.

I have one more question. Twice in this last post you referred to "these kinds of mistakes," and we wonder why you used the plural when you are really referring to only one kind.

"these kinds of mistakes"

Because I'm wrong, and you're right. But seriously, because there are other mistakes which are similar but not identical to that mistake.

quote:

There. I've outed myself. I'm an uptight, humorless prig pining for the paradigmatic past, when all was sweetness and rationality.

Aw, Froesch, we love you! And, yes, periodically we have discussed this here before. In fact, very recently I attacked "irregardless," and I then found that Quinion (whom I respect) quite logically supports the word.

quote:

Because I'm wrong, and you're right.

Zmj, why are you wrong in your usage of "these kinds of mistakes"? I don't think you are. At least in the first use, you had been talking about "between you and I" and "the media is;" those are 2 different grammatical issues, and I think the usage is correct.

P.S. Froesch, do you ever read Language Log? You might find it interesting on this subject, though it tends to support Zmj's stance.

why are you wrong in your usage of "these kinds of mistakes"

I was being sarcastic.

I finally heard the interview with "a linguist on NPR". Professor William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania; he has a name. Interesting that Robert Siegel did not stop him and derail the interview when Labov made a slip of the tongue and said "the influence of the mass media are". Much more interesting was to listen what Labov had to say about the fate of regional dialects in the States, and the vowel shift that is taking place in the inland northern region (basically Chicago and environs). I've only read some of Labov's papers, but I'd have to say his English is rather standard, and I would love to hear him lecture.