Eggcorn Forum

Number agreement? You mean “stories…are?”

I think I know what you were getting at. Gerundives that have plural subjects in the gerundive phrase, especially those that also have plural objects, often lead to plural verbs in the main clause, even though gerundives are almost always singular. We should say, for example, “Grammarians insisting on unsplit infinitives drives me crazy,” but it’s hard not to say “Grammarians insisting on unsplit infinitives drive me crazy.” When we make this mistake, we transform the gerundive phrase into a noun and a present participle (and slightly alter the meaning of the original sentence).

“Grammarians’ insisting on unsplit infinitives drives me crazy.”

“Grammarians insisting on unsplit infinitives drives me crazy.”

Both could be correct. They have slightly different meanings to my ear, however, and the second one is open to multiple grammatical interpretations (e.g., is “insisting” a participle or gerundive?).

The case that has been most studied (and debated) is the use of personal pronouns in the gerundive subject slot, such as:

“His/Him insisting on unsplit infinitives drives me crazy.”

You can read an exhaustive study of the personal pronoun choices in the BNC in this monograph: As the author notes, the non-possessive form (i.e., “him”) is much more common in modern writing. She gives an interesting summary of the debate’s history:

According to Peters (2004:229), the issue goes back as far as to prescriptivists of the 1700s, who claimed that the possessive was the only correct form, and contended that the objective should be banned. However, these prescriptive views were later criticised in the scholarly grammars of the 20th century. For example, Kruisinga (1932: 460) stated that schoolchildren were taught to use the possessive form by teachers who used Latin grammar as a model for the English grammar, and that this was a severe mistake. The Danish grammarian Otto Jespersen also took the liberal standpoint. In the years 1925–1926, Jespersen and the notorious prescriptivist H. W. Fowler argued over the matter in S.P.E. Tracts. Fowler (1925: 44) held that the objective construction was “indefensible”, and Jespersen (1926: 148,150) fought back, calling Fowler an “instinctive grammatical moralizer” and that “each language surely has a right to be judged on its own merits”.

FWIW, if I were your copyeditor and you submitted a manuscript with the first sentence above, I would remove the apostrophe. But if you protested, I would restore it-and send you a note saying “I won’t insist on David using the apostrophe.”

Last edited by kem (2010-11-07 15:28:08)

kem wrote:

Both could be correct. They have slightly different meanings to my ear, however, and the second one is open to multiple grammatical interpretations (e.g., is “insisting” a participle or gerundive?).

I agree.
.
Your insisting on these points have carried the day.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-11-08 07:49:50)

It is a mistake if it fails to convey intended meaning. The sentence

“Grammarians insisting on unsplit infinitives drive me crazy.”

forces the grammatically-aware hearer to make “grammarians” the subject, so that the sentence reads “Grammarians drive me crazy” and the four words following “grammarians” become an adjectival clause headed by a present participle. But if you mean to say that it is the act, not the grammarians themselves, that rattles your cage, then you would have to promote the gerundive to the subject level by using the singular “drives” as the verb.

Peter, did you know that the word “acrylic” is a derivative of “acrolein,” which in turn comes from the Latin words acris (“sharp”) + olere (“to smell”), with the addition of a Greek suffix?

Thanks Pat, I didn’t know that and couldn’t have guessed, for acrylic paint is much easier on the nose – or in it I suppose – than the far stinkier and hazardous spirit-based alternatives. Odd, that, but something we who relish such goat’s/goats’ stories might expect.