Thanks, Dick.

This is very helpful.

Edith

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 2:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What is going on with these sentences?

 

Edith:

My responses are below in red.

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 3:40 PM, Wollin, Edith <[log in to unmask]> 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.

 
In the student's sentence, both these (a demonstrative) and many (a quantifier) are determiners. Usually a noun phrase has just one determiner, but multiples are possible: her many lovers, all my sons, many a hapless linguist. I don't see postpositioning here.
 

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're right about the oddness. All of those prepositional phrases that act as quantifiers ("a string of," "a series of," "a whole lot of," etc.) are treated as determiners rather than head nouns for the purpose of SV agreement. As you say, we wouldn't say "A string killed itself." It's the students, not the string, who did the killing.


Edith Wollin


Dick
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