Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.

Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.

Which is the correct verb?

Thanks.

A case can be made for both options.

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I have changed your thread title.

'Thread titles should include all or part of the word/phrase being discussed.'

Use "is" if you take "who" to refer to Jill. Use "are" if you take "who" to refer to the missing girls.

My instant interpretation was that there are multiple missing girls, so are.

I think it's very unlikely to be meant in the other way. In fact, I think it barely makes any sense at all. Do other members not agree?

kohyoongliat, please tell us where you got this sentence.

I agree.

I have to go with "is". Remove "of the girls".

A simple reordering gives "Of the girls who are missing, one is Jill". "are" sounds most natural and grammatical to me.
In both cases, you already have an "is" for Jill.

Yankee said:

I have to go with "is". Remove "of the girls".

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Yes, if you delete the phrase that requires "are", it's easy to make the case for not using "are". But "Jill is one who is missing" is not the sentence.

Raymott said:

A simple reordering gives "Of the girls who are missing, one is Jill". "are" sounds most natural and grammatical to me.
In both cases, you already have an "is" for Jill.

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A reordering can be given for either parsing, actually, along with different contexts:

(1) Jill is one of the girls who are missing. Indeed, she has been one of the missing girls for quite some time.
Of the girls who are missing, one is Jill.

(2) Jill is one of the girls who is missing. Others of the girls are missing, too, though you are right that not all of them are.
Of the girls, Jill is one who is missing.

"One" would naturally be emphasized in interpretation (2), as would "others" in the second, contextualizing sentence of (2).

Attached are two old-fashioned Reed–Kellogg diagrams, one for the parsing with "who are" and the other for the parsing with "who is."

kohyoongliat said:

Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing. Which is the correct verb?

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[1] Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.

[2] Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.

The question here is whether the underlined relative clause belongs in the embedded noun phrase (with "girls" as head), as in [1], or the upper one (with "one" as fused determiner-head), as in [2]

The natural interpretation is that the relative clause modifies "girls": there is a set of girls who are missing and "Jill" is a member of this set.

However, you may well come across singular override, as in

[3] Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.

which presumably can be attributed to the salience within the whole structure of singular "one". But it cannot be regarded as a semantically motivated override: semantically the relative clause modifies "girls".

Yankee said:

I have to go with "is". Remove "of the girls".

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You know, that was my first-blink reaction.

But then I realized (as others did more quickly) that the sentence answers the question: One of the what? The girls who are missing, that's what. Girls are missing. She's one of them.

PaulMatthews said:

The natural interpretation is that the relative clause modifies "girls": there is a set of girls who are missing and "Jill" is a member of this set.

However, you may well come across singular override, as in

[3] Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.

which presumably can be attributed to the salience within the whole structure of singular "one". But it cannot be regarded as a semantically motivated override: semantically the relative clause modifies "girls".

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Doesn't the natural interpretation depend upon the context? We have no context. No context has been stipulated or even gestured at in the OP.

Syntax allows for either parsing. The relative clause can be an adjunct either of the noun phrase headed by "girls" or of the NP headed by "one."

If it is an adjunct of the former, "who" has a plural antecedent and takes "are." If it is an adjunct of the latter, "who" has a singular antecedent and takes "is."

If the latter parsing seems unnatural, imagine we know which girls are being referred to and know that some (more than one of them, but not all) are missing.

In such a context, it would be perfectly natural, semantically salient, and syntactically sound to identify Jill as being one of the girls who is missing.

kohyoongliat said:

Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.

Which is the correct verb?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

I am not a teacher, by the way.

The antecedent of "who" is not "one", but "girls". "One" is not the subject of the verb. The actual subject is "who". It is, therefore, plural. If we turn the sentence around in our minds, we will end up with the correct verb: Of the girls who are missing, Jill is one of them.

Michael Swan says in his Practical English Usage (529.1) [3rd Edition] that "strictly speaking, a plural verb is correct" in one of+plural noun+relative clause structures. Frederick T. Wood, the author of Correct English Usage [1987 edition], holds the same view. Patricia T. O'Conner (in her "Woe is I") [pgs. 60-61: 1996 edition] suggests "If the that or who comes before the verb, it's plural; if not, it's singular". She gives examples like: (1) He's one of the authors who say it best; (2) One of the authors says it best.

Reader's Digest's "The Right Word at the Right Time" agrees with the above opinion.

kohyoongliat said:

Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.

Which is the correct verb?

Click to expand...

My tendency is to pair one with is. See the following sentence.

Jill is one of the missing girls.*

Note that those of us who speak the language daily tend to economize on words. And we don't do it consciously. We do it unconsciously.

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*I consider that sentence more natural.

Andromeda said:

I am not a teacher, by the way.

The antecedent of "who" is not "one", but "girls". "One" is not the subject of the verb. The actual subject is "who". It is, therefore, plural. If we turn the sentence around in our minds, we will end up with the correct verb: Of the girls who are missing, Jill is one of them.

Michael Swan says in his Practical English Usage (529.1) [3rd Edition] that "strictly speaking, a plural verb is correct" in one of+plural noun+relative clause structures. Frederick T. Wood, the author of Correct English Usage [1987 edition], holds the same view. Patricia T. O'Conner (in her "Woe is I") [pgs. 60-61: 1996 edition] suggests "If the that or who comes before the verb, it's plural; if not, it's singular". She gives examples like: (1) He's one of the authors who say it best; (2) One of the authors says it best.

Reader's Digest's "The Right Word at the Right Time" agrees with the above opinion.

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I do, too!

Tarheel said:

My tendency is to pair one with is. See the following sentence.

Jill is one of the missing girls.*

Note that those of us who speak the language daily tend to economize on words. And we don't do it consciously. We do it unconsciously.

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*I consider that sentence more natural.

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This sentence is different from the original one. Here, "Jill" is the subject, and the copular verb is, therefore, singular.

Andromeda said:

This sentence is different from the original one. Here, "Jill" is the subject, and the copular verb is, therefore, singular.

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That was the way Tarheel would phrase it, because it's more concise and direct. We know it's different. That was the point.

Andromeda said:

The antecedent of "who" is not "one", but "girls".

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What makes you so sure? It is grammatically possible for either "girls" or "one" to be the antecedent of "who," and there is no context to guide us.

Andromeda said:

"One" is not the subject of the verb. The actual subject is "who".

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Yes. "Who" is the subject of the verb in the relative clause.

Andromeda said:

It is, therefore, plural.

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Whether "who" is singular or plural depends on whether its antecedent is "one" or "girls." Either antecedent is grammatically possible.

Andromeda said:

If we turn the sentence around in our minds, we will end up with the correct verb: Of the girls who are missing, Jill is one of them.

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The sentence can be turned around that way, yes. And it can also be turned around like this: Of the girls, Jill is one who is missing.

Andromeda said:

Michael Swan says in his Practical English Usage (529.1) [3rd Edition] that "strictly speaking, a plural verb is correct" in one of+plural noun+relative clause structures.

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Strictly speaking, Swan is wrong there. However, he proclaims that rule only after giving two examples which clearly lend themselves to that parsing.

To help you see the possibility of the other parsing, it may help you to study the following example:

Earth is one of the planets in our solar system that has liquid water.

You won't want to say "have" is needed in that example, because it is unknown whether any other the other planets in our system has liquid water, and therefore there is no such thing as a known set of planets that have liquid water in our solar system. All we can say is that Earth is one of them that has it.

Andromeda said:

The antecedent of "who" is not "one", but "girls". "One" is not the subject of the verb. The actual subject is "who". It is, therefore, plural. If we turn the sentence around in our minds, we will end up with the correct verb: Of the girls who are missing, Jill is one of them.

Michael Swan says in his Practical English Usage (529.1) [3rd Edition] that "strictly speaking, a plural verb is correct" in one of+plural noun+relative clause structures. Frederick T. Wood, the author of Correct English Usage [1987 edition], holds the same view. Patricia T. O'Conner (in her "Woe is I") [pgs. 60-61: 1996 edition] suggests "If the that or who comes before the verb, it's plural; if not, it's singular". She gives examples like: (1) He's one of the authors who say it best; (2) One of the authors says it best.

Reader's Digest's "The Right Word at the Right Time" agrees with the above opinion.

Click to expand...

Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.

The references you provide are essentially correct.

The natural interpretation is that the relative clause modifies "girls": there is a set of girls who are missing and "Jill" is a member of this set. Syntactically, the relative clause can only belong in the embedded noun phrase with "girls" as head. Thus the plural verb "are" is correct.

However, this is not always the case. Consider this example:

Ed is one of her colleagues who is always ready to criticise her.

Here the relative clause belongs in the topmost noun phrase with "one" as fused determiner-head. It is not a matter of there being a set of colleagues who are always ready to criticise her, but of there being just one colleague who is always ready to criticise her.

Piscean said:

Piscean is one of the members who are online at the moment.
Piscean is one of the members who respond/responds here regularly.
Piscean is one of the members who makes quite a few tysop.

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I'd use the plurial in all of thoes.