I think you're exactly right about why it feels singular to me. "A chicken and a half lays an egg..." feels just like "Three and a half ounces of water weighs about a centigram" Thanks, Allan! Andy On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 8:41 AM, Allan Wechsler <acwacw@gmail.com> wrote:
Committing my usual error of wading into a frivolous conversation with my Serious Hat on...
Number in grammar is not a mathematical concept; it's a purely formal one. The "number" of a noun phrase, and hence the verb form you have to pick to agree with it, is determined by the formal structure of the phrase and of its component words, *not* by the meaning of the phrase. Now, different people can have form-agreement rules that differ in various details. For me, "A chicken and a half lays ..." feels wrong (even without the subjunctivizing "if"), so the phrase *is* plural for me. If the subject isn't plural for Gosper and Andy, it must be because they are (in some sense) parsing it differently, so that it has singular *structure*. My guess is (and I can't be certain, because I don't have their linguistic intuitions to guide me) that for them, the and-a-half construction converts the noun phrase from a "count noun" to a "mass noun"; mass nouns always parse as singular in American English.
On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 5:24 AM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 1:18 AM, Andy Latto <andy.latto@pobox.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 12:49 PM, Adam P. Goucher <apgoucher@gmx.com> wrote:
1. ((a (chicken)) and (a (half))), not (a ((chicken) and (a (half)))).
That doesn't explain why it isn't plural; compound subjects of the form "A and B" are normally plural.
Frog and Toad are Friends.
Andy
So >1 isn't essential for plural, else "Two half-wits writes a grammar book, ..."
--rwg _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
-- Andy.Latto@pobox.com