On 2010-10-11, at 3:40 PM, Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar wrote:

> In the past week, I've been asked about two sentences that seem to ignore what we all think we know about number.
> 
> Here is the first: If I had learned English in my native country, I wouldn't have these many problems."  "Problems" certainly seems to be the noun here, but we would all say "this many problems," not "these many problems." We would say "these problems." Is this an example of postpositioning that was discussed last week? I can imagine saying "These many problems are bothering me." But in speaking there would be an emphasis on many and a pause between these and many not used normally.

The explanations so far have been accurate, I think, but perhaps confusing--not because they weren't clearly articulated, but because of another terminological confusion between categories and functions. Both 'these' and 'many' traditionally belong to the category of adjectives, but now are typically regrouped as determiners. Unfortunately, in this regrouping, there's no distinction made between the category 'determiner' and the function it typically performs. Huddleston & Pullum call the category 'determinatives' and the function 'determiner' where Quirk etc. make the opposite choice. I'll use the H&P terminology. So even though both words are determinatives, I think the function of 'these' is modifier in the determinative phrase 'these many', and 'many' functions as the head of the DetP. The DetP functions as the determiner in the NP 'these many problems'. 

> And here is the second: "In recent weeks, a string of teenagers have killed themselves after being tormented by classmates........ " We would usually say that string is the subject and requires a singular verb. However, that clearly would be very strange here and we certainly wouldn't have the string killing itself. Is it the reflexive here that requires the plural verb?

You could say that 'string' is number-transparent. According to H&P, the main number-transparent nouns are: lot, plenty, lots, bags, heaps, loads, oodles, stacks, remainder, rest, number, couple

Best,
Brett

-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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