The Grammar Logs
#504

Is the verb "to make" in the sentence below required to agree the main clause subject, "rivalries", or the relative pronoun, "what" of the dependent clause that acts as a predicate nominative?

1. Rivalries are what make a conference great.
2. Rivalries are what makes a conference great.

The relative pronoun what is tricky because it contains its own antecedent, so that it can, in a sense, be translated as "that which." To figure out whether we should use the singular or the plural verb with what, let's translate the sentence into something like "Rivalries are that which makes a conference great" or (better yet) "Rivalries are [that component of conferences which] makes a conference great." We choose the singular makes, then, because the "which" of our "translated" relative pronoun refers to the singular component."

Authority: The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996. Used with the permission of Oxford University Press.

I have been outvoted — nay, shouted down — by friends whose judgment I value more than my own on this question. When a "what clause" comes first in a sentence and serves as a subject, we will generally use a singular verb to go with it, as in "What makes a conference great is the rivalries that make the headlines, year after year." On the other hand (a friend writes), "where the speaker has decided to begin with a plural subject, the complement should remain plural: 'Rivalries are what make a conference great.' So I vote for plural verbs throughout the sentence about rivalries at conferences."

A recent discussion among my softball team members concerned whether the following sentence was grammatically proper: " My hair needs cut." Some thought the sentence should be " My hair needs to be cut," and others thought the "to be" was superfluous. I feel the first sentence is flawed, but can't properly state the reason I think that. Please resolve this for us, because someone needs their hair cut.

I'm afraid this means that your softball team is not doing well, now that you're blaming the outfielder's missed catch on the idea that hair got in his/her eyes. "My hair needs cut" would definitely be substandard. I don't know where that usage comes from, because it seems to crop up all over the country, but it doesn't work. You can't leave out the infinitive that way. "My hair needs to be cut" is a definite improvement (and "My hair needs cutting" would be another possibility), but frankly, I don't see anything wrong with "I need a haircut."

Which sentence is correct:

1. And me too, the sinner, teach me my Lord to offer repentance.
2. And I too, the sinner....
3. And me also, the sinner...
4. And I also, the sinner...

Thanks

That first pronoun form needs to be the in same form as that used in "Teach me, my Lord, to offer repentance." The adverbial "too" and the appositive "the sinner" do not affect the fact that the first "me" and the second "me" are really the same thing/person and the pronoun is being used in the same manner, as the object of whom the Lord should teach. I would add some commas here to set off the "too" and the vocative "my Lord." It has nothing to do, really, with its use in a new sentence.

My husband and I are in disagreement about the following:

side by each

(this originated with the newfies in Canada; they have all sorts of sayings like that which don't make any sense to me)

They use side by each instead of side by side.

Grammatically correct or not?

I doubt if this expression is provincial enough to ascribe it strictly to folks from Newfoundland. If you do a search for "side by each" on Google.com, you'll find nearly a thousand such entries. Of course, if you do a search for "side by side," you'll find nearly two million, so clearly the latter is much more common. "Side by each" is relatively unusual, for sure, but I wouldn't banish the user of that phrase to the rocky, snow-and-salt-encrusted shores of Newfoundland. My limited dictionaries neither include nor comment on the phrase. Perhaps you'd have better luck the next time you're in a library rich enough to own the Oxford English Dictionary.

I have a question about nominative possessive (That's proof I looked in your FAQ first) sentences. How do you use nominative possessive in plural situations such as "Yours is the power, the glory, the blessing" or "Yours are the power, the glory, the blessing" Yes, this is another church question. The NIV bible says something totally different, which I believe sounds awful. In the footnote for Matthew 6:13, the NIV writes, "Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." I think the nouns should be combined with commas but do you still use "is" or "are"?

Thanks

The possessive form of the pronoun can be either singular or plural, depending on what they're referring to. "Your car is ugly; mine is beautiful." "My fingers are stubby; yours are long and slender." I think it's possible that the editors of the NIV regard "the kingdom and the power and the glory" to be, essentially, one thing (like macaroni and cheese, to be horribly mundane about it), and that would make the "is" appropriate. (That would also be the function of the and's in that phrasing [and the commas would not be appropriate].) On the other hand, if these three things are discrete elements, the "are" would be appropriate.

Please advise if the following is grammatical: "As overhead work is in progress in this building, pedestrians are advised to use the covered walkway, which was temporarily constructed for safety purpose."

It seems to be grammatical enough, but by the time someone reads it, they will have been conked on the head by a falling brick. If you're talking about a sign, I would recommend something like

If this is a note in a newsletter, you could be a bit more expansive: "While overhead work is in progress on this building, pedestrians should use the covered walkway." (It will probably be obvious enough that the walkway is temporary and is there for safety purposes, won't it?)

I'm a intermidiate English learner from VN. I've got a grammar question and I hope you could explain it for me. It is like this: I read this paragragh from a magazine: "I've never believed in measuring one's worth by the size of his or her bank account. I prefer to look at distance traveled." I can manage to understand the whole idea. But the last sentence seems strange to me. What does "distance"and "traveled" function as? Is "traveled" an adjective, which is the object of "look at"? Thank you for your time.

Think of it this way. The writer prefers something, so that thing, whatever it is, is going to be the object of the verb "prefer." In this case, instead of a thing (like "baseball," say), the thing preferred turns out to be an infinitive phrase: "to look at (something)." The infinitive phrase contains, within itself, a complement, in this case a prepositional phrase, "at (something)," and, in this case, the object of the preposition, "distance," is modified by a participle, "traveled." Perhaps it is the inversion of the phrase, "distance traveled," that makes it a bit confusing for you. I hope this helps.

Isn't the phrase "period of time" redundant? After all, period specifies time only. I have never heard of a period of mass, distance, area, volume, temperature, density or any other parameter.

One often hears people deriding the phrase, "this point in time," because "this point" or "this time" or "now" will nicely suffice. I've never heard people complaining about "period in time" before, but I suppose you have a point. "This period" or "this time" would do the job nicely. The phrase, "this period of/in history" seems useful, though, doesn't it?

Recently, I heard an English person—he was actually from Wales—talk about the "break and borrow" of land. What did he mean by "borrow"? Is it the opposite of "break?"

It's a delightful phrase — or at least it sounds delightful — but I have no idea what it means, nor is there any help in my various dictionaries and resource books (and Google.com comes up with nothing useful). I shall leave an e-mail icon here in case some reader can be of help. In the meantime, if you find this Welshman again, wrestle him to the ground and don't let him up until he explains the phrase.

BUT LATER, friend of mind found this in the OED.

Buried in the second page of definitions for "borrow" is a little one admitting "meaning and origin obscure", used to describe the pitch of a wall. Eg. in 1686 of the walls of a blast furnace "less transhaw, more borrow" in which the more borrow pitch of walls makes better iron.

I'm wondering, then, if the phrase doesn't describe the geological indentations of hillside and valley — or, the way that a plow breaks the ground and imposes a pitch, a contour (a "borrow") to the soil as it does so.

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