🐇 🐇 🐇 from my 5/1/20 posting “Trois lapins pour le premier mai”:
It’s the first of the month, which I have learned to greet with three rabbits — by starting the day saying “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit”. More than that, it’s the first of May — by some cultural reckonings the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere and also (in some countries) International Workers Day, so: dance around the maypole, set bonfires for Beltane or Walpurgis, prepare for outdoor bo(i)nking (rabbits again!), break out the lilies of the valley (muguets pour le premier mai), cue the choruses of L’Internationale, and march in solidarity with the workers. (Feel free to choose from this menu, as your taste inclines and your schedule allows.)
But enough of lapins; time to attend to our moutons, the sheep of the day being English NPs of the form N1 of N2 (like bouquet of flowers and tons of stuff) and how they work as subjects of clauses. These sheep came to us on 4/29 from Steven Levine, who wrote on Facebook:
Here’s a sentence I just came across that seems odd to my ears:
By the mid century a variety of celebrations was engaging morris dancers.
I know that the subject is variety [AZ: no no no; the subject is a variety of celebrations; this is important] and the verb is was, and yet it seems off to me — I was expecting were. I’m not asking for a grammatical analysis, I’m asking if this would stop you for a second if you were just reading along.
To which I wrote:
Steven said he didn’t want a grammatical analysis, but here it comes anyway.
I warned you.
My very compact response (somewhat edited, and formatted in helpful ways that aren’t available on Facebook):
English has two NP constructions of the form N1 of N2.
In one, N1 is the head N of the NP, and of N2 is a PP complement of N1; in the clearest examples, N1 denotes a container or containers, and of N2 is a partitive complement, denoting the contents of the container; if the NP is a (grammatical) subject, then the verb of its clause agrees with N1 in number: a vase of flowers was on the floor (though N2 is plural) but bags of junk were on the floor (though N2 is singular). (In my examples above: a bouquet of flowers is on the table.)
In the other construction, N1 is a determiner (denoting the size of a collection) modifying the head N2; so if the NP is a (grammatical) subject, then the verb of its clause agrees with N2 in number: a lot of people were at the door (though N1 is singular) but lots of stuff was on the floor (though N1 is plural). (In my examples above: tons of stuff is strewn around the house.)
The complexity comes from the fact that N1 of N2 can be ambiguous as to which construction it represents: bunch as N1 can then denote either a contained collection (a sweet bunch of flowers was on the table) or (in informal, slangy usage) the size of a collection (a whole bunch of flowers were blooming ‘a lot of flowers were blooming’).
Whether a particular N1 functions as head or modifier is, alas, a matter of convention/usage, though there seems to be a lot of pressure to move N1s to modifier function. As a matter of brute usage fact, the N1 variety has mostly moved to determiner status; if it denotes numerosity (as in a variety of celebrations), it’s a modifier, period, and you get verb agreement with N2 (a variety of celebrations were engaging morris dancers) — though head uses of variety survive (the wide variety of modern roses is astonishing ‘it’s astonishing how widely modern roses vary’; the (particular) variety of roses I’m fondest of is Mr. Lincoln).
The aftermath. An exchange with Jason Parker-Burlingham:
— JPB > AMZ: I may need an afternoon to fully understand the explanation, but I’m grateful for it.
— AMZ > JPB: It took three hours to craft a compact answer that covered the important facts but didn’t wander into the rat’s nest of related matters. But that means that, yes, you have to read it carefully. (I estimate that presenting this stuff in a leisurely and reader-friendly way would make the text 5 to 10 times its current length. Still, I apologize for its density.)
…..
Just one thing from that rat’s nest: in British English, collective nouns, like government and committee, are more often given plural verb agreement (the government / committee are entertaining alternative courses of action) than in American English, where singular agreement is virtually obligatory. But the facts are complex: BrE has tons of singular agreement with these two nouns, and AmE allows plural agreement with some other collective nouns, like family. So there’s a lot to be said here. (Crucial background reading: my Language Log posting on 12/8/06, “Plural, mass, collective”, about how English has several ways to “mean more than one”.)
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