| 词组 | half |
| 释义 | half 1. A few commentators—among them Sellers 1975, Longman 1984, Chambers 1985, and Corder 1981—discuss half with respect to verb agreement. They all tell us that when half, either noun or adjective, is followed by a singular noun it takes a singular verb; when followed by a plural noun, a plural verb. This makes good sense, because it follows notional agreement and also allows for the principle of proximity. Those who use the wrong verb, as Sellers says some do, have perhaps been frightened by traditional grammar or the school exercise of diagramming sentences into believing that the formal subject, half, must govern the verb, when in fact the true subject is the following noun. Such constructions are not very common in our files. Perhaps the problem only surfaces occasionally. Here are three examples: • ... half of whose population votes —Gustave Mersu, American Mercury, October 1952 • ... a half of the children drop out —James B. Conant, Slums and Suburbs, 1961 • ... half the citizens don't know or care —Robert Penn Warren, Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back, 1980 2. Handbooks going back as far as MacCracken & Sandison 1917 say that both half a (or an) and a half are all right, but a half a is redundant. A few of the more recent ones, like Scott Foresman 1981, notice that the a half a construction seems to be mostly a spoken usage. This is our opinion, too, for we have very little evidence of its use in print. It would seem most likely to occur with fixed phrases like half an hour or half a dollar, which are thought of as units and which are frequently found hyphenated in print. Here is an instance quoted from speech: • ... I learned ... that almost no woman who has gone beyond the eighth grade ever calls a 50-cent piece a half-a-dollar —John O'Hara, foreword to Assembly, 1961 In edited prose a half and half a and half an are usual: • ... eating a half grapefruit —E. L. Doctorow, Loon Lake, 1979 • Given half a chance —Aristides, American Scholar, Autumn 1981 • ... to make you listen with half an ear —Donal Hen-ahan, N.Y. Times, 28 Nov. 1967 3. Cut in half. Bernstein 1971 and Copperud 1980 note that there was formerly a considerable to-do about the propriety of in half used after verbs like cut, break, divide, or fold. (The subject is mentioned in Vizetelly 1906.) The argument was that there are incontrovertibly two halves resulting from whatever verb action is applied and that the plural halves must therefore be used. The singular is not used with thirds or quarters, for instance. Bernstein and Copperud pooh-pooh the argument on the grounds of idiom; they also point out that half functions in several other uses differently from the other fractions. But Bernstein's and Copperud's "formerly" is not quite right, for Freeman 1983 is still favoring in halves in formal English. Our evidence shows that in half is the prevailing form, even in mathematics texts: • Fold the bill in half and then in half again —Max A. Sabel et al., Essentials of Mathematics, Book 1, 1977 • Rotifers... whose nutritional intake was cut roughly in half increased their life span —Johns Hopkins Mag., Spring 1968 In halves is sometimes used. This example may have been influenced by the plural avocados, however: • Cut avocados in halves and prepare as described — Anne Mason, Starters & Afters, 1974 |
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