English grammar

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Re: English grammar

Postby smallwhite » Thu Aug 02, 2018 1:37 am

You can google this (as one query):

"one of them is" "one of them are"
Last edited by smallwhite on Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: English grammar

Postby Ani » Thu Aug 02, 2018 2:02 am

smallwhite wrote:You can google this (as one query):

"one if them is" "one of them are"


But what if it's "one of those... people who go through" not "one (of those people) who"
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Re: English grammar

Postby smallwhite » Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:21 am

Ani wrote:
smallwhite wrote:You can google this (as one query):

"one if them is" "one of them are"


But what if it's "one of those... people who go through" not "one (of those people) who"

I don't understand how your first splitting is possible, but if you google my two phrases together, you will see people asking questions similar to OP's and people answering with their preferences and thoughts and analyses.
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Re: English grammar

Postby kulaputra » Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:33 am

Both are correct. Neither is "less" or "more" correct then the other, though there may be regional differences. Verbatim searches on Google for "one of those people who goes through life" yields ~28.6K hits, while "one of those people who go through life" yields ~35K hits. Both are well-attested and certainly equally correct.

I believe the following analysis is spot-on, with one minor correction, the parenthesis in the latter sentence should come before "those," as they form a "natural" constituent. I've made the correction below:

Deinonysus wrote:I think either works and "to go" is just attached to a different word depending on how you inflect it. You could be one (of those people) who goes through life… You could be one of (those people who go through life)…
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Iha śāriputra: rūpaṃ śūnyatā śūnyataiva rūpaṃ; rūpān na pṛthak śūnyatā śunyatāyā na pṛthag rūpaṃ; yad rūpaṃ sā śūnyatā; ya śūnyatā tad rūpaṃ.

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Re: English grammar

Postby Serpent » Thu Aug 02, 2018 12:15 pm

The main clause is "you could be one of those people". The subordinate clause is "who go through life blabla". It's an adjective clause describing the word people.
dampingwire wrote:
Bluepaint wrote:Could be worse. You could be one of those people who goes through life...


I'm going to go against the current prevailing view and plump for the above. I think it sounds better to me because if I substitute "someone" for "one of those people", that sentence works and the other one doesn't.
And why should it be replaced seamlessly? What if we replace "who" with "which"? Or what if we say "I'm one of the few who go through life..."

To me the singular only sounds right if you add emphasis/repetition: You could be one of those people - one who goes through life...
In an actual conversation I probably wouldn't pay attention though.
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Re: English grammar

Postby Kraut » Thu Aug 02, 2018 7:26 pm

Could be worse. You could be one of those people who goes through life...

or

Could be worse. You could be one of those people who go through life...


"those people" requires a necessary relative clause, no comma:

You could be one of those people who go through life..

You are one of those people, who goes through life.

"one" is already defined by "of those people", therefore the relative clause is not necessary and needs a comma.
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Re: English grammar

Postby kulaputra » Fri Aug 03, 2018 7:01 pm

Kraut wrote:
Could be worse. You could be one of those people who goes through life...

or

Could be worse. You could be one of those people who go through life...


"those people" requires a necessary relative clause, no comma:

You could be one of those people who go through life..

You are one of those people, who goes through life.

"one" is already defined by "of those people", therefore the relative clause is not necessary and needs a comma.


Commas don't exist in speech, and I think the question is primarily speech related.
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Iha śāriputra: rūpaṃ śūnyatā śūnyataiva rūpaṃ; rūpān na pṛthak śūnyatā śunyatāyā na pṛthag rūpaṃ; yad rūpaṃ sā śūnyatā; ya śūnyatā tad rūpaṃ.

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Re: English grammar

Postby Kraut » Fri Aug 03, 2018 7:24 pm

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads ... s.2861561/

Yes, that's right. One of the major US women's magazines got into trouble some years back by not understanding this. The magazine wanted to emphasize that it was intended for young women as well as those middle-aged and older. Its ad showed an attractive young woman with a line reading something like "I'm one of those little old ladies who reads X." Of course the word should have been read, not "reads". Many people noticed the error, and the ad was changed
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Re: English grammar

Postby kulaputra » Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:18 pm

Kraut wrote:https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/i%E2%80%99m-one-of-those-people-who-try-tries-to-write-stories.2861561/

Yes, that's right. One of the major US women's magazines got into trouble some years back by not understanding this. The magazine wanted to emphasize that it was intended for young women as well as those middle-aged and older. Its ad showed an attractive young woman with a line reading something like "I'm one of those little old ladies who reads X." Of course the word should have been read, not "reads". Many people noticed the error, and the ad was changed


This is the work of prescriptivist busybodies with nothing better to do then write angry letters to magazines. In actually spoken English, as opposed to in the masturbatory wet dreams of inksniffers, both sentences are perfectly valid.
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Iha śāriputra: rūpaṃ śūnyatā śūnyataiva rūpaṃ; rūpān na pṛthak śūnyatā śunyatāyā na pṛthag rūpaṃ; yad rūpaṃ sā śūnyatā; ya śūnyatā tad rūpaṃ.

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