| 词组 | agreement, pronoun: nouns joined by and, or |
| 释义 | agreement, pronoun: nouns joined by When the 18th-century grammarians were laying down the law of grammatical agreement, Lowth 1762—in a footnote—made the statement that the "conjunction disjunctive," or, requires agreement in the singular number. To illustrate his point, he reprinted this sentence: • A man may see a metaphor, or an allegory, in a picture, as well as read them (it) in a description — Joseph Addison, Dialogues upon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals, 1702 Lowth, of course, was correcting Addison's them to it. It was a general practice of the 18th-century grammarians to give examples that contravened their rules, for purposes of correction; the practice has for us moderns the weakness of leaving us wondering whether anybody did, in fact, follow the rules the grammarians laid down. Addison, one of the master stylists of English prose who died in 1719 and never knew that grammarians a half century later would make frequent use of him as a bad example, was simply following notional agreement, as everyone did before the middle of the 18th century. Notional agreement did not disappear with the preachments of Lowth and his contemporaries, moreover, as a perusal of articles in this book will demonstrate. When singular nouns are joined by and, notional agreement will not often clash with grammatical agreement (but see some of the examples at each): • One goaded professor once denied that two & two make four, merely because a pro-Adler student said they did —Time, 17 Feb. 1952 • ... in a gentle stupefaction of mind, & very tolerable health of body hitherto. If they last, I shall not much complain —Thomas Gray, letter, 5 Mar. 1766 But singular nouns joined by or are more likely to be affected by notional agreement at the expense of grammatical agreement (as Lowth well knew but could not accept): • We shall be pleased to send a free specimen copy ... to a friend or relative on receipt of their address — advt., London Calling, 22 July 1954 • ... no lady or gentleman would so far forget themselves —George Bernard Shaw, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, 1898 (in Jespersen) • How quickly the American student makes friends with a book or a man and treats them as if they were his contemporaries —Time, 2 Aug. 1954 • We would soon become a nation of sleepless neurotics if the average man or woman was not endowed with courage, some common sense, and the ability to resist the continual assaults against their peace of mind —Harrison Smith, Saturday Rev., 30 Jan. 1954 • ... a man or a woman would come in here, glance around, find smiles and pleasant looks waiting for them, then wave and sit down by themselves — Doris Lessing (in Reader's Digest 1983) In the next example the author starts out with the him or her prescribed by grammatical agreement, but then abandons it for the less unwieldy plural pronouns of notional agreement: • If you have a young brother or sister of, say, fifteen years old or so, think that you have him or her before you and that you are trying to explain the point of your article to them and at the same time to prevent them from thinking what an ass you are to be wasting their time —R. B. McKerrow, Rev. of English Studies, XVI, 1940 • No man or woman can hesitate to give what they have —Woodrow Wilson, speech, 17 Sept. 1918 (in H. L. Mencken, The American Language, abridged, 1963) Mencken notes that this is the line as Wilson spoke it, according to the papers reporting it. But when it was published in his Selected... Addresses, the professional Wilson emended "they have" to "he or she has." In our view, singular nouns joined by and will seldom present a problem; notional and grammatical agreement will join to call for a plural pronoun. When singular nouns are joined by or, notional and grammatical agreement will likely conflict. It would appear that the farther the pronoun is from the set of nouns referred to, the more likely it is to be plural in accordance with notional agreement. And the farther the pronoun is from its referent, the less likely it is to be noticed by some zealous spiritual descendant of Bishop Lowth. You should feel free to use a plural pronoun where it sounds right and natural to you, even though some stickler for grammatical agreement may spot it. Where it does not seem natural, stick to the singular. Ask yourself who was the greater writer—Addison or Lowth? |
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