I am usually delighted when someone finds a problem in my book 
because it means they were reading it closely enough to notice. And I am 
planning to rewrite the sentence so that even a few people aren't taken 
aback by it. The original context was this:
   "As we discussed in chapter 3, not only do determiners open a noun 
phrase, but when more than one occur, these seem locked into a 
heirarchical structure of their own:...
   In my mind at least, "more than one" stands in for "determiners". The 
noun phrase in its unellipsed form would be "more determiners than one." 
"When more determiners than one occur, these seem locked..." But I can 
certainly see the pull of one toward the singular. "When more than one 
determiner occurs, these seem locked..." Though here the plural "these" 
seems to set up an inconsistency, singular verb and plural pronoun 
divided only by comma.  So the solution is to rewrite the sentence with 
"two or more". "When two or more determiners occur, these seem locked..."
   An interesting problem.

Craig


Bruce Despain wrote:
> Peter,
>  
> I'm with you on this one.  There can be no mistake; in my experience I 
> have observed: 
>  
> More than one person was waiting in line when I got there. 
>  
> I might reword these, but it doesn't seem to shed much light on the 
> construction.
>  
> More people than one was waiting. / More people than one were waiting.
> More people than one person was waiting.  (ugh!)
> Two or more people were waiting. (mathematically or logically 
> equivalent but clearly a distinct expression)
>
> This reminds me of the collectives common among the British where some 
> sort of logic gets control: The committee were undecided. 
> I am also reminded of the problem with "kind", "sort" and "type".   
>  
> "some type of person" (sg)
> "some types of people" (pl)
> ?"some type of people" (sg or pl)
> *"some types of person" (sg or pl) logically correct?!
>  
> Bruce
>
> >>> Peter Adams <[log in to unmask]> 06/24/07 11:46 AM >>>
>
> In a message dated 6/24/07 8:42:04 AM, [log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
>>    I see "more than one" as plural just because it could be replaced with
>> "two or more". Or maybe I just intuit it that way.
>
>
> What is more interesting to me is that I see it as singular.  How can 
> that be?  Where in the world did I get that? 
>
>
>
> Peter Adams
>
>
>
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