Date:  Tue, 7 Nov 1995 10:23:56 EST

From:  Larry Horn <LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU>

Subject: Re: "One of the x that has/have"?



Dennis P. challenges:



>Bracket this:



>'This is the only one of the fictions which has/*have caused us any trouble

>at all' (as opposed to '...one of those dictions which have...). It seems

>clear to me that 'semantic' facts can indeed 'disrupt' the over-simple

>prescriptivist rule.

>The 'only' addition demands singular agreeemnt



Let me take up the challenge. Consider:

(i) This is THE ONLY ONE [of the fictions] which HAS caused us any problems.



(ii) This is the only one [of [THE FICTIONS that HAVE caused us problems]]

          that needs to be dealt with today.



Yep, it's bracketing, a.k.a. figuring out whose subject is whose. Dennis's

example, (i), sports a negative polarity item (_any_) and a relative pronoun

(_which_, typically associated with non-restrictive relatives) that make the

bracketing, and thus the singular agreement, in (i) appropriate. In (ii),

I've changed _which_ to restrictive _that_, removed the _any_, and added

enough context to force a different bracketing and plural agreement (leaving,

of course, singular agreement on _needs_, which does agree with 'the only one'

--its subject).  Safire, eat your heart out.



Larry