On Mar 10, 3:44Â pm, Sam Wilson
ed.ac.uk> wrote:> In article
>
d62g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
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> Â MIG doreenbird.co.uk> wrote:>> On 10 Mar, 12:06, Sam Wilson
ed.ac.uk> wrote:>
>>> Â Boltar
yahoo.co.uk> wrote:>>>> On Mar 8, 9:20 pm, "Graculus"
hotmail.co.uk>
>>>> wrote:>>>>> Mainly because it should be, "None of the passengers WAS
>>>>> hurt."
>
>>>> Since when? "were" is the plural form, passengers is plural.
>
>>> Because none is (arguably) singular.
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>> Consider oranges ...
>
>> If you said "several oranges", "three oranges", "fifty oranges" or a
>> "couple of oranges", you'd be referring to the individual oranges, so
>> you'd use "were" afterwards.
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>> If you said "a box of oranges", most likely it's the box you are
>> referring to, so you'd say "was" (ie picking up a box is not the same
>> as picking up many individual oranges).
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>> In the "none" case, it's not really a strictly grammatical issue; it's
>> whether you are considering the individual passengers or a unit
>> container of passengers. Â Is the meaning on the lines of "a none of
>> passengers ..."?
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>> I doubt it, so I think that the plural is fine. Â There is no word
>> "nany", so "none" has to stand for "not one" and "not any".
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> And if it stands for "not one" then it's singular. Â I'm not being
> dogmatic, just pointing out that, arguably, "none" is singular. Â You can
> also argue that it's plural.
>
> Sam
It's not that simple though. "A couple" is also singular, and if you
were talking about a married couple you'd probably say "a couple
was ...".
But you wouldn't say "a couple of people was ..." because in that
sense, despite being a singular noun phrase, it's actually standing in
for "about two".
I know that grammar is about how words fit together rather than about
how the world is, but the two sometimes do interract.
