End of ADS-L Digest - 5 Nov 1995 to 6 Nov 1995 ********************************************** There are 33 messages totalling 817 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. "One of the x that has/have"? (9) 2. supervisor/coupon (10) 3. "One of the X that has/have"? 4. One of the x that has/have 5. bougainvillea (9) 6. Bounced Mail 7. bougainvilla 8. E-Glyphs/Emoticons ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 Nov 1995 00:05:08 -0400 From: Jeutonne Brewer Subject: Re: "One of the x that has/have"? Sorry I don't have the exact sentence in front of me, but I remember a rule from my high school (prescriptive) English class. For "One of the fictions" have/has the verb should be has because the head noun (or simple subject) is "one." The plural in the prepositional phrase does not serve as the controller for subject-verb agreement. In other words, I remember the rule the you do, Bethany. However, I think this is an area where change is taking place. It seems that the noun closest to the verb often controls agreement. In a case like this syntax seems to control rather than semantics. I suspect there is much variation in the examples like this. ********************************************************************* * Jeutonne P. Brewer BREWERJ[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IRIS.UNCG.EDU * * Department of English * * U of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27412 * *********************************************************************