Dick,

There is certainly the proximity rule involved, but complicating this case is the usage of "one or two" in the collective sense, as "a few," in which case it would call for plural agreement.  The same collective agreement would account for the plural agreement form "take."  I would go along with a proximity treatment if the two numbers were modifying noun, as in "There is always one dog and two cats that will disturb the night."

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Veit, Richard
Sent: 2009-01-11 11:41
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Unusual SV agreement problem

A colleague sent me this inquiry:

The following sentence appeared in a wire-service bit in today's paper, from a quoted source: "From time to time, there is one or two who take their chances." At first glance, this looks like an agreement error. However, I think the "rule" is that when a compound subject is joined by or, the verb agrees with the part of the compound that's closer to it. Hence, "There is one or two" is correct. By the same logic, perhaps, the verb take is closer to two than to one and is also correct. Or, to look at it another way, who, which is really the subject of take, is plural because it is closer to two than to one. Would you care to weigh in on this?

I sent him my view, but I am curious to hear the takes of ATEGers on this. What do y'all think?



Dick Veit

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