{"id":12292,"date":"2009-10-25T14:26:22","date_gmt":"2009-10-25T14:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/10\/25\/fun-with-english-is-none-singular-or-plural\/"},"modified":"2009-10-25T14:26:22","modified_gmt":"2009-10-25T14:26:22","slug":"fun-with-english-is-none-singular-or-plural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/10\/25\/fun-with-english-is-none-singular-or-plural\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun With English: Is &#8216;None&#8217; Singular or Plural?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\" class=\"firstinpost\"><font face=\"Georgia\">To my ear, the following sounds grammatical:<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">1. None of the members were present at the meeting<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">whereas the following sounds ungrammatical:<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">2. None of the members was present at the meeting.<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">But isn&#39;t &#39;none&#39; just a contraction of &#39;no one&#39;? If it is, then (2) is grammatical and (1) is not. Now compare<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">3. All of the members were present at the meeting<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">4. All of the members was present at the meeting.<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">(3) sounds grammatical to me, while (4) sounds decidedly ungrammatical.<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">But surely (3) is logically equivalent to the ungrammatical<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">3*. Each of the members were present at the meeting<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">and (4) is logically equivalent to the grammatical<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">4*. Each of the members was present at the meeting. <\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Let this serve as a warning to school marms and <a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2009\/10\/the-paltry-mentality-of-the-copy-editor.html\">copy editors<\/a>&#0160; and those who would imitate them: be careful when you criticize another&#39;s English. He may have thought a lot harder and deeper than you. Your petty rules may collapse under logical scrutiny.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To my ear, the following sounds grammatical: 1. None of the members were present at the meeting whereas the following sounds ungrammatical: 2. None of the members was present at the meeting. But isn&#39;t &#39;none&#39; just a contraction of &#39;no one&#39;? If it is, then (2) is grammatical and (1) is not. Now compare 3. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/10\/25\/fun-with-english-is-none-singular-or-plural\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Fun With English: Is &#8216;None&#8217; Singular or Plural?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}