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A Word, Please: Short relative pronoun makes a big difference

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One of the most interesting questions I’ve gotten recently was from a colleague who had come across the phrase “one of the living writers who really matter.”

The use of “matter” instead of “matters” contradicted something he was taught: that when you have a noun, followed by a preposition, followed by another noun, the first noun governs the verb. By that logic, the word “one” should dictate the verb, suggesting “one matters” instead of “writers matter.”

Microsoft Word’s spell-checker agrees. It’s telling me that I should change “matter” to “matters,” citing “subject-verb agreement” as the reason.

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Yet despite what my friend was taught and despite even what the great grammar minds at Microsoft think, the passage was correct as written. The verb “matter” partners with “writers,” not with “one.” But before I explain why, let’s first look at my friend’s idea about prepositional phrases.

The belief, and it’s a common one, is that only the head noun in a noun phrase can get a verb. Think about “a team of rivals,” “a crowd of well-wishers,” “a committee of experts,” “a flock of seagulls.” In each, you have a singular noun, followed by the preposition “of,” followed by a plural noun.

In most cases it’s true that a verb that follows would pair with the first noun because, usually, that’s where the emphasis is. “A team of rivals is meeting in Delaware,” not “are meeting.” “The crowd of well-wishers is too big to fit in the town square,” not “are too big.” Precisely because “team,” “crowd,” “committee” and so on head up their respective noun phrases, we know that they’re important.

But does that mean that the rivals, well-wishers, experts and seagulls can’t perform the action of a verb? Nope. The object of a preposition can govern a verb anytime the speaker or writer wants it to, which is usually when the action is that of multiple individuals instead of a single unit.

Compare “a crowd of well-wishers are at each other’s throats” to “a crowd of well-wishers is at each other’s throats.” See how the singular verb doesn’t make sense? That’s because the emphasis in not on a group acting as a singular unit.

So “a flock of seagulls is overhead” and “a flock of seagulls are scattering in every direction” are both correct.

Here’s Barbara Wallraff’s “Word Court”: “Start by assuming that the main, singular noun (committee, crowd) is what should be agreed with. If that results in something illogical or terribly peculiar, switch to agreeing with the plural object of the preposition.”

That’s good to know, but in fact it has nothing to do with why our original passage was correct. Our real answer hinges entirely on that little word “who.”

Compare “one of the writers has talent” with “one of the writers who have talent.” Both are correct because the word “who” changes the grammar in a very significant way.

“Who” is a relative pronoun. The job of a relative pronoun is to introduce a relative clause, which modifies a noun that comes before it. As a result, the “who” clause functions as one big adjective that, in turn, makes the whole passage simply a noun phrase still waiting for its own verb.

Unlike “one of the writers matters,” “one of the writers who matter” can’t stand alone as a sentence. It still needs a verb. And “matter” isn’t cutting it because the word “who” relegated it to essentially just a piece of an adjective. So by including “who,” suddenly the subject “one” is still waiting for a verb of its own to complete the sentence. “One of the writers who matter is in the hallway.”

“Who matter” modifies “writers,” not “one.” It’s the writers who matter, even if only one in is the hallway. And it’s all because “who” demoted our verb to simply a piece of a modifier.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.

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