| 词组 | agreement, subject-verb: what-clauses |
| 释义 | agreement, subject-verb: what-clauses • What is frightening is to discover how easily we can be misled —Alden Whitman, Harper's, April 1972 • What officials have done is essentially this —Frederick N. Robinson, General Electric Investor, Summer 1971 The two clauses beginning with what in the examples are the subjects of their sentences. The pronoun what in the first example is the subject of the clause; in the second, it is the object. The usage problem with these what-clauses is primarily the number of the verb in the main sentence, and, when what is the subject of the clause, the number of the verb in the clause. Copperud 1970, 1980 reports various long discussions of the subject, mostly from different perspectives. From the welter of analysis and opinions he discerns one clear point of agreement: what is not necessarily singular in construction but can be plural. Commentators not covered by Copperud tend to agree, except Simon 1980, who has to go back to Partridge 1942 for support in requiring the singular. The best discussion of this question is in Bryant 1962; the citations in the Merriam-Webster files gathered since 1962 generally confirm the findings of the studies she reports. The first point to observe is that mixed usage occurs in only a limited number of cases, namely when the complement of the verb of the main sentence is plural. In the great majority of wto-clause sentences in our files, everything is singular, and there are no problems. When the what in the what-clause is the object of the clause and when the predicate noun following the main verb is plural, it tends to pull the verb with it. Bryant reports the plural verb favored by about three to one over the singular. Here are examples of both kinds: • What we need and crave are shows as handsomely preposterous as ... the kind George Edwards used to put on at Max's Gaiety —George Jean Nathan, The Theatre Book ofthe Year, 1946-1947 • What we need in government, in education, in business ... are men who seek to understand issues in all their complexity —J. W. McSwiney, Annual Report, The Mead Corp., 1970 • What we are getting is old answers to old questions —Daniel Boorstin, Look, 20 Aug. 1968 (Perrin & Ebbitt 1972) When what is the subject of the clause, and the what-clause is the subject of the sentence, things get a bit more complicated. Perrin & Ebbitt 1972 points out that usage is consistent when the wto-clause, linking verb, and predicate nominative agree in number—being either all singular or all plural. Bernstein 1958, 1962, 1965 and Johnson 1982 concur and urge writers to try for such a consistency. Simon 1980, however, wants only the singular and reproduces the following sentence for criticism, though it illustrates the consistent plural: • What have [Rubins's italics] surfaced are similes, viscous streams of them —Josh Rubins, Harvard Mag. The consistent singular is actually the most common case: • What is absent from the present book is any attempt to think in terms of practical problems —Times Literary Supp., 22 Oct. 1971 Mixed usage occurs when the subject what in the clause is singular but the predicate nominative is plural. In such cases the main verb tends to be plural: • What bothers Professor Teeter most are the guesses, hunches, speculations, and fancies in which many language shamans like me indulge —Safire 1984 • What is needed from the left wing of university reform are programs that begin to specify the steps of change —John Gagnon, Change, October 1971 Bryant further points out that when the complement consists of two or more predicate nouns, the verb is plural if the nouns are plural and singular if the nouns are singular: • What impresses them are planes and divisions and ships —Harry S. Truman, radio address, 26 June 1953 (in Bryant) • What is most striking about Johnson is the vigor of his ideas, the variety of his knowledge, the forceful-ness of his conversation —J. C. Mendenhall, English Literature, 1650-1800, 1940 (in Bryant) When the complement of the main verb is a that-clause the verb is singular: • What does follow is that the issue is susceptible to rational methods —Phillip H. Scribner, AA UP Bulletin, September 1971 Clearly usage is mixed in these complex sentences, but you need not regard what as inflexibly singular. Dwight Bolinger notes in a letter reprinted in Safire 1984 that in the influence of the plural predicate noun over the main verb English is similar to French and Spanish. It is desirable to be consistent, but, in an area where notional agreement appears to hold absolute sway, it is perhaps even more desirable to be natural. |
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