Friday, January 22, 2010

Text for blog post: Is WHO always singular???

There is the following grammar rule: "Who" is always singular, like "anybody," "nobody," "somebody," "someone," "anyone," and "no one."


However, not everybody agrees with this! (Which, however, has had no impact on the rule so far, so you MUST observe it ;-))) For example, there is one person, Sylvia Chalker, who argues against the "right grammar rule." Here is a link to one page of a review article where this person gives good reasons for why one might need to rethink a "correct grammar rule."

One of your peers will summarize Mrs. Chalker's arguments for you, and post the summary here on the blog as a new thread. All of you (even the person who posted the summary!) then have to post a short comment with their personal opinion about whether Mrs. Chalker was right or wrong.

1 comment:

  1. Chalker does make a point about instances where who is definitely a plural subject, but did anyone else feel her examples sounded awkward? Our in-class lessons used the singular replacement pronouns he and him. While the subjects and objects were not always a single person, the accompanying verb tense always reflected a singular entity. Those sentences just sounded more correct than Chalker's examples. Her point has merit, but this is one time where I have to side with style over substance.

    ReplyDelete