Observation: The Prevalent Confusion of Number

Stop letting your predicates wag the verb’s tail!

Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967) — Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

In a coherent English sen­tence, the verb agrees with the sub­ject in number: One sub­ject IS singu­lar; two sub­jects ARE plural. The num­ber of the sub­ject noun or pro­noun deter­mines the verb’s num­ber. That’s pretty simple. Regret­tably, though, this basic rule of clear com­muni­ca­tion is break­ing down in popu­lar Ameri­can speech.

I first noticed the error creep­ing into speech a few years ago, and initially it was limited to sen­tences that use “what” as the sub­ject pro­noun. Admit­tedly, this usage can invite con­fusion: When it begins a declara­tive sen­tence as the sub­ject, the word “what” stands in for “the thing that,” and it always starts out as inde­ter­mi­nate. In effect, it intro­duces a momen­tary mystery or puzzle that awaits resolu­tion.

The usual func­tion of the verb in these sen­tences is to link the sub­ject pro­noun to a com­ple­men­tary pred­i­cate phrase that reveals missing informa­tion about the nature or char­ac­ter­is­tics of the sub­ject. Here’s a famous example (from the iconic movie Cool Hand Luke): “What we have here is a failure to com­muni­cate.”

The most com­mon linking verb is “to be,” but other verbs often used to link a sub­ject noun to a com­ple­men­tary pred­i­cate phrase of descrip­tive prop­erties include “appear,” “seem,” “look,” “become,” “sound,” “taste,” and “remain,” among others.

For the sake of clarity in com­muni­ca­tion, the gram­mar of our lan­guage pre­sumes by default that the inde­ter­mi­nate sub­ject pro­noun “what” is singu­lar in num­ber. That’s a neces­sary starting pre­sump­tion because, at the outset of the sen­tence, the listener doesn’t yet know whether the thing being dis­cussed will turn out to com­prise a uni­fied whole or multi­ple con­stitu­ent parts.

For example, if a general in the field asks a lieu­tenant what he’s look­ing at through his binocu­lars, it would be proper English for the lieu­tenant to reply: “Sir, what I see IS … three tanks and two com­panies of troops moving directly toward our posi­tion.” Strunk and White’s Ele­ments of Style (3rd edition 1979), at page 11, pro­vides another correct example: “What is wanted IS a few more pairs of hands.”

In recent times, how­ever, it’s become quite prev­a­lent — almost ubiqui­tous — for Ameri­cans to say “ARE,” rather than “IS,” in sen­tences like those above: “What I see ARE three tanks.” “What we need ARE five gallons of water.” These con­struc­tions are gram­matically WRONG — the speaker errs by letting the plural pred­i­cate phrase con­trol the num­ber of the link­ing verb in place of the singu­lar sub­ject pro­noun.

Listen for this error — you’ll find it’s infected nearly all con­ver­sa­tional speech and is now spread­ing into adver­tising scripts and, increasingly, into more formal spoken and written texts:

Here’s a sen­tence, from an obvi­ously care­fully crafted script, read by Veri­zon’s CEO Hans Vest­berg in a high-pro­duc­tion info­mer­cial touting the roll­out of his com­pany’s new 5G Ultra wire­less service (at 5:50 of the video 5G Ultra Show): “What is truly inspiring ARE the things people are using it for.” Yikes. And here’s one from a political Web site: “What is wholly new, however, ARE the number of American elites who are eager to help the Chinese dictatorship in its quest for global hegemony.” And from an NBC Olympics commentator: “What I love about her skiing ARE her turns.”

You might pro­test that the link­ing verb in these “what” sen­tences is a lot like an equal sign: If A equals B and C, then B and C should equal A. And if that’s the case, you might ask, what’s the real harm if the speaker dispels the mystery of “what” for the listener a little sooner by sig­naling through the verb that the thing in question is, in fact, plural, not singu­lar? You end up at the same place.

Well, one risk is that when a gram­matical mis­take gains wide­spread cur­rency in a par­tic­u­lar usage, even a narrow type of usage like “what” sentences, it won’t remain con­fined to that usage. And that’s what I per­ceive is hap­pen­ing with the error of num­ber in link­ing verbs: If you tune your ears a little finer, you’ll notice that this error is metas­ta­sizing beyond “what” sen­tences. More and more, you hear people in con­ver­sa­tion, in pre­sen­ta­tions, in tele­vision com­mer­cials, and in a grow­ing range of more formal speech using faulty sen­tences like these:

“The biggest problem she had with Trump WERE his inflam­ma­tory Tweets.”

“The best thing about Walmart ARE the everyday low prices.”

“The cause of all the problems ARE the leaking pipes.”

“The only thing I regret ARE the books I never bought.”

“He said the only thing that was cold WERE his hands.”

And this one from my old friend Bill Barr in his recent book One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General (p.235): “THE BACKBONE [singular subject noun] of the department ARE [plural linking verb] the ninety-three United States Attorneys and their staffs of prosecutors and civil litigators around the country [plural predicate noun].” Oh, no, Bill, not you, too!

In all these examples, the author has erred by letting the plural predicate phrase determine the number of the linking verb in conflict with the singular number of the subject noun. This breach of the fundamental grammatical rule of number agreement between subject and verb in sentences with linking verbs now dominates popular speech and writing in America.

Some might insist that con­ven­tions of gram­mar do and should evolve with the changing usages of popu­lar speech. It’s true that what is deemed gram­matically accept­able in English usage has evolved gradually over time and is not the same today as it was, say, in the 17th century. But I’m not aware of any recog­ni­tion or even asser­tion that there’s been a change in the require­ment of num­ber agree­ment between sub­ject and verb.

More­over, what­ever pro­cess of evo­lu­tion occurs in accepted lan­guage usage over the long term, the reality of that gradual evolution is not rea­son to jet­ti­son con­temporary rules of gram­mar in defer­ence to the latest capri­cious trend. What is ulti­mately at stake in pre­serving sub­ject-verb agree­ment is the clarity and effec­tive­ness of our com­muni­ca­tions — and few things could be more funda­men­tal to the health of society.