(phoenix) none was vs. none were
the question is this:
in the following sentence, should the third verb be singular or plural?
"i looked for logos on the engines of the little plane i took to get from phoenix to here, and there was/were none that i could see."
now, immediately after typing "were" in this sentence to justin, i corrected myself and typed "there was none." he corrected my correction, saying that "was" was definitely wrong. this quickly escalated into hot debate. my initial stance was that "none" should always have a singular verb, because this was what i learned in 8th grade. justin's initial stance was that it always depends on the implied number of things/people to which "none" is referring, so in this case the only appropriate verb is "were."
after the first round flurry of internet searches, i now think that either is appropriate, depending on the intent. if the intended meaning was something like "i looked for logos on the engines of the little plane i took to get from pheonix to here, and there was not a single one that i could see," then "was" is a slightly better choice. however, if i intended the meaning to be more like "i looked for logos....and there were not any that i could see," then "were" is the better choice. i will even concede that the latter is probably better here, but i am certain that either would be acceptable.
it would be a draw if justin would concede also that both are acceptable, but at the time of this posting, he bushingly stuck to his "was is wrong" guns. we have consulted several highly authoritative sources, but none have yet been sufficient to end the debate.
posted by cherry blossom @ 8:22 PM
18 Comments:
I didn't say it always depends on the context. I said this particular construction depends on the context. So in this case you're wrong.
It says right there in your highly authoritative source that usage depends on the noun. Just face it.
And I think your sentence above ("...but none have yet been sufficient to end the debate.") is wrong because in this case the construction with verb after the "none" requires that the verb be singular.
You knew that and were trying to provoke comments again, weren't you?
no, but that would have been a good trick. in this new case, "none" is referring to "sources", so the plural verb is more appropriate. however, the singular would also be OK.
in the sentence "there were ______," the noun or pronoun after the verb were is the one that requires agreement with the verb. so the same rules would apply to both cases. in the original sentence, you could argue "were" because "logos" is plural. here you can argue "were" because i'm referring to a number of sources.
that is, here you can argue plural "have".
Boy, you are all turned around. The singular is definitely appropriate there. I think you need a grammar refresher.
i think what we need is an authority on the matter.
To solve the dilemma of the indefinite pronoun, reduce it to a definite noun and work backwards.
__________________________________________
"i looked for logos ... and there were no logos."
ERGO
"i looked for logos ... and there were none."
__________________________________________
This technique works in analyzing your second contested statement as well.
__________________________________________
"we have consulted ... sources, but no source has yet been sufficient."
ERGO
"we have consulted ... sources, but none has yet been sufficient."
__________________________________________
~ARON (http://www.arondanburg.com)
thanks, aron - i think you're right, but there's still a subjectivity problem because reducing to a definite noun doesn't necessarily have a unique solution. couldn't you just as easily (and correctly, albeit a bit more awkwardly) choose:
"i looked for logos...and there was no logo."
ERGO
"i looked for logos...and there was none."
and
"we have consulted ... sources, but no sources have yet been sufficient."
ERGO
"we have consulted ... sources, but none have yet been sufficient."
?
i'm not saying that these are better choices...i agree that aron's choices sound better. but the real question is whether the above is INCORRECT.
what i need is some proof that the above is actually incorrect. then i will eat crow. or whatever one does with crow.
"i looked for logos on the engines of the little plane i took to get from phoenix to here, and there was/were none that i could see."
You looked for logos on engines. Could a reader interpret that statement as meaning anything other than multiple logos on multiple engines? You would have to specify a search for a single logo ("i looked for a logo on the engines...") for your argument to convince me. The indefinite pronoun reduces to a plural noun in this case, I think.
"we have consulted several highly authoritative sources, but none have yet been sufficient to end the debate."
In this situation, just one highly authoritative source with a definitive answer would suffice to end the debate, correct? Consider this small clarifying edit:
"we have consulted several highly authoritative sources, but NOT ONE OF THEM has yet been sufficient to end the debate."
I consider your original statement equivalent to my edit. On that basis I would reduce the indefinite pronoun to a singular noun.
~ARON (http://www.arondanburg.com)
excellent points, and i agree fully. however, another way of resolving the ambiguity of "none" is to try substituting either "not any" or "not one" for "none." in the case of the logos sentence, you could easily substitute "not one," so the singular verb should technically be legal. this is true unless it is technically incorrect to say "i looked for logos on engines, but not one was found." This is, as far as I can tell, a matter of choice, style, and subtle differences in meaning (in this case meaning that not only were multiple logos not found, but not even one was found), rather than an incorrect grammatical formation. No? Similarly, in the second case, this seems more of a style choice than a correct vs. incorrect choice. In the case of sources, I was kind of just joking to make a point...but I think to end the debate might actually require multiple sources combined...
Kelly, I really do consider your construction of "i looked for logos on engines, but not one was found" grammatically incorrect. I submit that it sounds "awkward," as you put it, because you can sense the error.
I stand by my claim that the antecedent determines whether you should treat the indefinite pronoun as singular or plural. In your original sentence, you looked for logos, not just one. Even in your argument for consideration of the singular, you state "not only were multiple logos not found" before getting to the "not even one" part. In that reasoning, I think you made my case. That "not even one" fragment makes no sense except in the context of a search for more than one. More than one leads me to the plural pronoun, so "none were found," right?
In the second example, you consulted multiple sources, and I presume that you considered their merits individually. One-by-one, you did not find them convincing. Not even one convinced you. Not one was convincing. None has yet been sufficient. This analysis doesn't seem like a matter of style to me, though I suspect you may still disagree.
~ARON (http://www.arondanburg.com)
well, i don't disagree.
however, there are still a couple problems that i can see that make it less clear to me. what about the fact that if i were to find a logo, there would be only one? one logo per engine. so although i looked on several engines, i was looking with the expectation of finding one, not multiple ones. does that change the meaning?
also, although i might have been convinced by one source, it would most likely require several sources to end the debate decisively.
i like your arguments and also your depth of knowledge about this - do you have any sources you could quote for us that might strengthen your claim that either one of these original statements is clearly incorrect? so far, it still seems more a matter of meaning/style than a cut and dry grammatical rule.
justin and i were at dinner last night and another question came up that's a bit easier and you might know... does "more than one" get a singular or plural verb? we had a laugh about getting confused on that. it's rare to see justin admit confusion on anything grammar related. fun times.
Aron, I told her these same things: that her construction requires that the verb agree with the antededent, but she just will not admit defeat. You have to admire her spunk, though.
AND the antecedent.
Kelly, in all of your counterclaims, you have gone beyond the syntax of the original sentence to make that indefinite pronoun singular. If you went looking for just one logo repeated on those many engines, then you should have said so. Did you really did expect to find one logo per engine? I could not have guessed that from “i looked for logos on the engines of the little plane...” Maybe you would find many, just one or none. What you found doesn’t change the conditions of the search as you originally stated them, however. “i looked for logos,” you said. The problem then stems not from vagaries of style, but rather your imprecise and ultimately misleading wording of what you originally had in mind, it seems to me.
As for that “more than one” dilemma, is there more than one way to say it, or are there more ways than one? You would say “more than one thing IS here” rather than “more than one thing ARE here,” right?
Justin, what you regard as “spunk” looks like just plain “obstinate” from here. (Kelly, just so you know, I was smiling when I wrote that.)
~ARON (http://www.arondanburg.com)
hey! i'm not obstinate! (pout) i'm sincerely trying to get to the bottom of this! should i really have said "i looked for a logo on the engines?" that doesn't sound right either - not only were there more than one engines, but there were more than one planes. ;) bwaaa haa haa
dang. maybe i never should have looked for the bloody logos. i did only because justin didn't believe me that it's common for aircraft engine manufacturers (especially Rolls Royce) to put their logo on their engines.
and justin, stop trying to show off. you never used that big fancy antidecent word.
and both of you, i need PROOF! PROOF, i say! we can argue our opions all day (or week, apparently). gimme the references, boys.
Antededent, not antidecent. Sheesh.
Post a Comment
<< Home