Re: CHAT: use of "they"

Baba scripsit:

> I must admit this throws me a bit. An example was a US Fire-Drill
> poster which said "Make sure all personnel is outside and accounted for".
> or the sentences; "Which one of them is a doctor? None of them is."
> In both cases I'd expect "are" not "is".
The first one is probably a simple error.

The second example, although peculiar-sounding to me, is historically
correct:  "none" is derived from "no one", and was originally always
singular, as in "None but the brave deserves [not 'deserve'] the fair."

There is an increasing pressure to treat NPs of the form "X of Y", where
X is relatively empty semantically, as having the number of Y rather
than X.  Tolkien discusses, in a letter, the case of "A large number
of walls have/has been destroyed", where "has" would agree formally
with "number", but "have" agrees with the true semantic subject "walls".
He concludes: "You can say what you like."

--
John Cowan                                      cowan@ccil.org
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.