tzfujimino
Key Member
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2007
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- English Teacher
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The last one would be more natural in the signular,
:shock:
:shock:
Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing. . . . 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 is one of the members who is online at the moment.
Piscean is one of the members who responds here regularly.
Piscean is one of the members who makes quite a few tysop.
Paul Matthews, post #27, page 3:
I touched on the topic of mismatch in my post #10, example 3:
However, you may well come across singular override, as in
Jill is one of the girls who is 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".
I think 'outrageously closed' is a little OTT.
I was surprised to see that thread closed when an interesting discussion was still going on, but I think 'outrageously closed' is a little OTT.
Here is a trick that one source suggests: Turn the sentence around. Instead of "James is one of those people who is/are computer illiterate," mentally rearrange the sentence as: "Of those people who ____ computer illiterate, James is one." It seems pretty clear that "are" is required in order to match "people."
William Safire, No Uncertain Terms (2003), pages 336-339.
FYI - I think that thread should not have been closed.
I got it from one of my grammar books. I cannot remember which one.
The answer provided is "are".
Jill is one of the girls who is/are missing.
In your sentence, you may wish to use the plural verb. "Jill is one of what?" "The girls who are missing."
The singular verb, however, would be appropriate in this sentence: "Jill is the only one of the girls who is missing."
Source: House and Harman, Descriptive English Grammar (1931 and 1950), pages 352-353.