But then I started thinking: the relative clause refers to 'books', not one, just as the relative clause above refers to 'you', not 'it'.
So maybe it should be 'have', not 'has'. It turns out this one has been bothering people for centuries. Although Fowler thought 'has' here a blunder, it's been used by many good writers. It seems that 'one' is just too strong a draw for most of us; it's that oldidea of notional agreement taking over from formal agreement. I think it's the same with 'Is it you who are'.
Formal agreement favours 'are', notional agreement favours 'is'. And in spoken English, at least, notional is often more natural and idiomatic than formal or 'correct'. Answer: "our client"; singular or plural? Thus either: "Our client is seeking" or "Our clients are seeking". That is the key question here. Dyske Feb Hi Donna!
I found a worksheet about simple present tense. I am confused. Please help me! Celia75 Mar Gary44 Jun I cannot believe that the French would have any doubt about which is correct.
They would say: "C'est toi qui as [singular] tort", not: "C'est toi qui avez [plural] tort. JCL Sharp May Dyske, you say it should be "is" because it matches "the answer". OK, but what if the number changes, mid-sentence: "It is they who are the problem. Plural wins in this case. Do you have a question? Submit your question here. Yes No. All Rights Reserved. Posted by donnahansen Filed in Grammar 23 comments Share on Facebook. Share on Twitter.
Email will not be published. Please enter your comment here. Comments Sort by Oldest Latest Rating. When you knock at the door do you say "it's me" or "it is I"? I think you're confusing yourself, Donna.
Brus Oct 6 votes Permalink Report Abuse. Brus Oct 2 votes Permalink Report Abuse. Brus Nov 0 vote Permalink Report Abuse. For instance, you wouldn't say "It's I who am wrong. You say it should be "It's you who is wrong" but I disagree: I would say "It is you who are wrong", and this is why: You say the word "who" refers to the subject "you", but inherits only the number singular or plural of the subject.
Brus Jul 10 votes Permalink Report Abuse. Brus Dec 3 votes Permalink Report Abuse. Ignorant me Mar 1 vote Permalink Report Abuse. There was a question where the students had to fill the gap with a suitable verb in the appropriate tense, includinng the word 'ever': "This is one of the best books that And my first reaction was: "This is one of the best books that has ever been written on the subject".
Dyske Feb 2 votes Permalink Report Abuse. Celia75 Mar 0 vote Permalink Report Abuse. Clearly, it should be "Who are 20 years old," since they are twins, therefore, plural. Thread starter Sarp Start date Mar 12, Sarp Senior Member Hindi. Who are we? We is the second person plural , so you must use a plural verb.
Click to expand Colloquially, that sounds quite natural. US English, Palestinian Arabic bilingual. Without quotation marks, we is a plural pronoun that is part of the sentence grammar. But in quotation marks "we" is a text string. Any text string is a singular noun in the sentence grammar: Who is "we"?
What do you mean by saying "we"? What do you mean by "we"? What do you mean by "dance the elephant den"? It is more difficult to create a "quoted text string" in spoken English, though it is possible. Some speakers use "air quotes" hand gestures to identify quoted strings in spoken English. Who are the people who want to win the lottery? Oxford University Press. I would like to illustrate my answer to the question with the following sentence: S1: There are two books on the desk.
If we underline "two books" and ask our students to turn the sentence into a wh-question, we will get the following two questions: Q1: What is there on the desk? Q2: What are there on the desk? Q1 is a REAL question. We ask such a question when we do not know whether there is one book, two books or even no books on the desk. In other words, when we ask such a question, we do not presuppose what it is or the number of it.
Q2 is different from Q1 in that we generally have presupposed that there is something and that the number of this something is grammatically plural. This occurs, for example, when we hang up a picture with several planes flying in the sky and do some oral question-and-answer exercises about the noun "plane" and its plural form "planes": What are there in the sky? In most cases of this kind, we can see what it is and know the number of it. One more, subtle example: Host: What will you have to drink?
Guest: What are the possibilities? The guest here presupposes and takes it for granted that the host has more than one kind of drink. That's why the guest does not ask, "What is the possibility? By the way, I find that there are two more wh-questions possible for S1: Q3: What is on the desk? Q4: What are on the desk?
It seems that the "there" in Q1 and Q2 can be left out, with the syntactic role of "what" interpreted differently. Q2 and Q4 are rarely touched in textbooks or grammar books.
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