(Image by Henry Reich)
One thing, singular. Two or more things, plural.
Subjects must agree with verbs in number: It is, they are.
Of all the cows in the meadow, none are white. Or, none is white? “None” is zero things, neither singular nor plural.
I’m of two minds about that question. The half of me that goes with “none is” are coming out on top.
Because a “half” isn’t singular nor plural either. Or aren't.
We could make a rule saying any number less than or equal to one
is singular. But then, why does “none are” sound better than “none is”?
I haven’t seen any rule like that in grammar books, but such a rule
would settle whether a negative number is, or are, less than zero. A
budget deficit is, or are?
(Then we have the pain-in-the-ass Brits, who speak a kind of
English, but treat collective nouns as plural: “The cricket team are….”
But wait, we civilized Americans do the opposite, singularizing nouns
that clearly imply plurality: “A variety of candies is on display.” Ouch.)
Maybe we could invent a conjugation of the verb “to be” that is
neither singular nor plural, but applies only to counts of less than
one. How about “ib”? Then everyone would understand that “half a loaf ib
better than none.”
We could use “ick” when the number is undetermined: “Albania’s
economy, and possibly Montenegro’s, ick facing recession next year.”
Darn those parentheticals and subordinate phrases!
These are thoughts spurred by editing ESL authors’ papers, and by
watching the struggles of ESL students. I don’t want to be a grammar
nazi, but what am I to make of a syntactically correct but semantically mystifying sentence like,
“Every student and teacher who attended the meeting was given an
evaluation form"? (Darn that passive voice!)
Is one-and-a-half things plural? Or are it?
Such are the anxieties of this reformed and recovering mathematician.
