Fowler, The King's English, 'Malaprops' §5, p.17, wrote:This jest would be pedantic in any case, since no one but schoolmasters and schoolboys knows what the paulo-post future tense is.
Lavrentivs wrote:Ulpiane, I think you are wrong: there is no reason why the phrase after but = except should have the same number as the subject. Compare: "I have nothing but apples." Would "I have nothing but an apple" be more correct?
Lavrentivs wrote:According to Fowler, p. 74, '"No one but schoolmasters and schoolboys knows" is exceedingly poor English'...
Have you looked in the book, Adrian?
Ulpianus wrote:...and with all due respect "but" doesn't mean "outside": it means "except", "save for", "other than".
"OED, Second edition, 1989; online version March 2012, <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/25316> wrote:but, prep., adv., conj., n.2, adj., and pron.
A. prep.
†1. Outside of, without...
2. Without, apart from, unprovided with, void of...
3. Leaving out, barring, with the exception of, except, save...
B. adv.
1. Without, outside...
Ulpianus wrote:If you have a singular subject, you need a singular verb, and try to keep everything else singular too if you can to avoid awkwardness: or make it all plural "Only apples taste so sweet." Either version is both correct AND easy to follow.
Ulpianus wrote:and we don't have any really reliable data on actual use, just our hunches.
adrianus wrote:Ulpianus wrote:...and with all due respect "but" doesn't mean "outside": it means "except", "save for", "other than".
Regarding "outside", consult a good English dictionary to see otherwise.
De anglicè "outside" praepositione, ut aliter scias, in dictionarium bonum anglicum inquiras."OED, Second edition, 1989; online version March 2012, <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/25316> wrote:but, prep., adv., conj., n.2, adj., and pron.
A. prep.
†1. Outside of, without...
2. Without, apart from, unprovided with, void of...
3. Leaving out, barring, with the exception of, except, save...
B. adv.
1. Without, outside...
Adrianus wrote:Ulpianus wrote:If you have a singular subject, you need a singular verb, and try to keep everything else singular too if you can to avoid awkwardness: or make it all plural "Only apples taste so sweet." Either version is both correct AND easy to follow.
The rule is easy to follow. In the sentence, "Nothing but apples tastes so sweet" what is the subject? The sensible subject is the word "Nothing" in "Nothing but apples". By no stretch of the imagination is the subject "apples"! The verb can only be "tastes". ["Nothing tastes so sweet apart from apples."]
Facilè regulam sequaris. Quid est subjectum per "Nothing but apples tastes so sweet" sententiam? "Nothing" anglicè est subjectum. Id nunquam erit nec esse potest hoc: "apples". Verba tunc anglicè "tastes".
Similarly, in "all but he are here" (= "All are here but he" formerly prescriptively and pedantically[!]; or "All are here but him" modernly and descriptively) the subject could not possibly be "he". It could never be "All but he is here" because he is the very one who is NOT here. Imagine the problems the sentence "All but he is liable" would cause in law.
Hoc in sermones latinos non converto quod de anglico tractamus.
Adrianus wrote:Ulpianus wrote:and we don't have any really reliable data on actual use, just our hunches.
We have more than that. With exclusive "but" and a pronoun, people today informally (and often generally, depending on sentence structure) tend to use the accusative, not the nominative: "None but he" --> "None but him" or "All but he" --> "All but him",—to make things blindingly obvious that the "none" or "all" governs the verb.
Vide Huddleston & Pullum, Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), Ch.15, §2.5: 59 (p.1312).
Ulpianus wrote:I can see how a non-native speaker consulting a dictionary might think that "but" was a preposition meaning outside, because the dictionaries say it can be so.
Ulpianus wrote:But I cannot but [sic] believe that in the sentence "Nothing but apples tastes so sweet" the word "but" is not a preposition meaning "outside", but "conj. 1. In a simple sentence; introducing a word of phrase (rarely a clause): without, with the exception of, save, except"
Ulpianus wrote:There, quite often I would guess (but it would be nice to have data -- which is why I called it a "hunch"), even fluent speakers seem led (or, if you prefer, misled) into using a plural verb -- and on the evidence of Fowler to have been doing so for a long time.
Anyway, I'm afraid I seem to have generated more heat than light, which was not my intention.
OED, 3rd edn., 2003, wrote:Many commentators state that none should take singular concord, but this has generally been less common than plural concord, especially between the 17th and 19th centuries.
Ulpianus wrote:I don't think that applies to either "nothing" or "nobody".
Ulpianus wrote:Which leaves only the vexed question of whether this is one of those times we should say "that's a mistake (though one commonly made)" or "that's an apparently illogical but regular usage".
Fowler, Modern English Usage, p.381 (1940 printing), wrote:none. 1. It is a mistake to suppose that the pronoun is sing. only & must at all costs be followed by sing. verbs &c
adrianus wrote:This is a very roundabout way of saying that even many fluent speakers can make a mistake about this because they just don't know what to say, so they have a 50% chance of getting it right. If the data showed significantly other than that for people who said they couldn't articulate the standard grammatical rule, then that would be evidence for the application of some rule that lay unarticulated behind their choice. That would be interesting in descriptive grammatical terms. The data would hardly be interesting if it revealed (as it probably would) simply that many fluent and educated people [assuming agreement about measures of fluency and education] were uncertain about what to say. Or you might learn that many fluent speakers default to tying a verb to the number of the noun that's closer when they have never learned to do otherwise.
People are not led or misled by the language. It's not entrapment! We choose our terms of expression and we're responsible for our choices and our mistakes. Nor is this a bad thing,—grammar and literacy can be forces for liberation, even if some might use them, or restrict them, in repressive, conservative ways.
Ulpianus wrote:Well, that frees me from decades of unnecessary guilt!
Sceptra Tenens wrote:The masses will propel the evolution of all natural languages, while the grammarians of every generation watch in horror.
adrianus wrote:Concerning "they, them, their. 1. One, anyone, everybody, nobody, &c., followed by their &c." (opus citatum, p.648), Fowler is against the use of their and disapproves of the OED's weak stance on the matter (they just say "not favoured by grammarians"). Reading between the lines, he sort of says that women should soak it up, and "he", "him", "his" is better if referring to bother sexes.
You're moving up your revolutionary gears there, Sceptra Tenens.
Sceptra Tenens wrote:Is there any modern language, save English (but English/outside of English/except for English/&c), that uses plural pronouns and verbs for the third-person singular? It will certainly be standard within the next century, and I have to admit that I do like languages to develop unusual quirks.
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