Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 May 4

Language desk
< May 3	<< Apr | May | Jun >>	May 5 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

May 4

What is the correct verb? Is the noun singular or plural? Is the correct verb "are" or "is"?

What is the correct verb? Is the correct verb "are" or "is"?

• (A) I agree to sign any papers that your counsel feels are necessary to accomplish this.
• (B) I agree to sign any papers that your counsel feels is necessary to accomplish this.

I am not sure what the "subject" (or antecedent?) is for the verb in question ("are" versus "is").

Version (A) seems to say "these are the papers -- plural -- that are necessary to accomplish the goal".

Version (B) seems to say "your lawyer feels that this is necessary"; "this" meaning "your signature on various papers".

Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:25, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I would try to put it that way

• (C) I agree to sign any papers that your counsel feels necessary to accomplish this.

...to see if the sentence finds itself a solution to its own dilemma?

You could also try to momentarily put it that way,

• (D) I agree to sign any papers to accomplish this, that your counsel feels necessary.

see if it helps? Akseli9 (talk) 18:49, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Huh? I didn't understand a word you said. To me, "A" is saying: "Your lawyer feels that these papers (plural) are necessary." To me, "B" is saying: "Your lawyer feels that your signing (singular) is necessary." I am not sure. Strictly speaking, I think that "are" is correct in the way that the sentence is now cast. (But I am not sure.) But, more importantly, I think that the sentence is saying -- or trying to say -- that it is the conduct of the party (i.e., his act of signing) that is important. Not that the "papers" are important. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:52, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

(A) is correct as you have formulated the sentence here. While it may implicitly be the signing that is important, the literal meaning of the text has the papers described as important. "Papers" is the subject of the verb "to be" here, so you should conjugate accordingly. "Papers" is a plural noun, so it must take a plural verb. Evan ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:06, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

To use (B), we could have "I agree to any signing of papers that your counsel feels is necessary", where signing (a gerund) is unambiguously the subject. Tevildo (talk) 19:26, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

All legal cases generate vast amounts of paperwork. The adviser will tell his client which documents need to be signed and which don't. He will also tell the client which documents are relevant to the case and which are of no importance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.23.52.169 (talk) 19:53, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

As a native speaker of English, I agree with Evan. Akld guy (talk) 20:38, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Ditto. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:57, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

A quick way to confirm: Leave out the part 'your counsel feels':

(A) I agree to sign any papers that...are necessary to accomplish this.

(B) I agree to sign any papers that...is necessary to accomplish this.

Clearly, A is correct. Akld guy (talk) 07:52, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I think all of you have missed the OP's point. They may have not phrased their question well, though, and had better put it as following:

What is the correct verb? Is the correct verb "are" or "is"?

• (A) I'm looking forward to signing these papers that your counsel feels are necessary to accomplish the goal.
• (B) I'm looking forward to signing these papers that your counsel feels is necessary to accomplish the goal.

The OP is not sure what the "subject" (or antecedent?) is for the verb in question ("are" versus "is").

Version (A) seems to say "your lawyer feels that these papers -- plural -- are necessary to accomplish the goal".

Version (B) seems to say "your lawyer feels that signing these papers -- singular -- is necessary to accomplish the goal".

HOTmag (talk) 08:29, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

OK, if it's the signing that's important (which is not implied by the structure of the sentence), the sentence is grammatically incorrect. It should be:

"I agree to the signing of any papers that your counsel feels is necessary to accomplish this."

In other words, the verb 'to sign' should be turned into the singular noun 'the signing' and then the 'is' is correct. We all lost sight of the fact that it was the signing that was important, because the sentence was grammatically incorrect for that in the first place. Akld guy (talk) 09:53, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I have already pointed out, that the OP "may have not phrased their question well ". HOTmag (talk) 10:01, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

The failure to communicate what is intended does not necessarily make the sentence grammatically incorrect. Grammatically correct sentences can have flawed or even nonsensical semantic content without being syntactically faulty. Evan ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:52, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I am the OP, so let me pipe in here. And let me clarify. I have a legal document (a contract). I did not draft the document. The contract says: "I agree to sign any papers that your counsel feels is necessary to accomplish this." (It says this without the text being bold. I am just adding the bold for this Wikipedia Help Desk.) When I read that, it seemed incorrect. But I was not sure. It also seemed correct. It seemed incorrect because the subject/verb did not agree. Through grammar rules, the verb should be "are" and not "is", to match the plural noun of "papers". However, when I read the sentence, I determined that it was really saying that "the signing" is the important conduct being addressed (or required) by the contract here. Not the "papers". In other words, the contract requires the party to "provide his signature when the lawyer thinks it best". That's the gist of the matter. The important component is not "the papers" but the requirement that you (the party) provide your signature when you are directed to. So, again, the singular "signing" is the key to the contract, not the plural "papers". So, I guess I was confused as to how to use the language already drafted, but still get across the correct intended meaning. Let's say that it is me who has to sign this contract. My reading is: "If the lawyer thinks it appropriate, then I must sign whatever papers he tells me to sign." That is the gist of the requirement being put forth. The gist of the requirement is not how many papers (singular or plural) I will have to sign. Rather, that I must sign the paper or papers (singular or plural), when the lawyers tells me to do so. So, in other words, the lawyer thinks it is my signing that is necessary to accomplish the goals. And not that it is the papers that are necessary to accomplish the goals. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:06, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

• (A) above is the correct subject-verb agreement. The subject for the verb is/are necessary is "papers". It's the papers whose necessity is being stated. Papers (plural) takes "are" as a verb. --Jayron32 16:28, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I may possibly be able to help if you can indicate what this contract relates to, i.e. what is the end (by the appropriate deployment of documents, signatures and counsel's advice) it seeks to achieve. I suspect that you have asked a solicitor (advocate/lawyer) to act for you in some legal proceeding and he has asked you to sign a "retainer". 92.23.52.169 (talk) 18:26, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

This is a landlord/tenant residential lease. The first person ("I", "me", "my", etc.) refers to the Tenant. The second person ("you", "your", etc.) refers to the Landlord. The exact clause of the contract reads as follows:

18. Subordination. This Lease shall be subject and subordinate to the liens of all mortgages that now or in the future affect the Premises. This means that the holder of a mortgage can, if it so elects, end this Lease upon a sale of the Premises in a foreclosure of the mortgage. I agree to sign any papers that your counsel feels is necessary to accomplish this.

Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:29, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm with Jayron on this. Since there is no preposition in the sentence, the subject/object is direct and so the plural form of the verb is the correct one. Subject/verb/object agreement does not depend on the inherent meaning of the sentence e.g. which action is more important, but rather on the construction of the sentence and its requisite parts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laguna greg (talk • contribs) 00:05, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I should note there is a distinction in SOME cases of English between notional agreement and formal agreement, but such distinctions rarely come up with common plurals (for example, words like "papers") There are sometimes dialectical differences, but generally the only time notional agreement "wins out" is when you have a singular word representing a group of things (For example "The Who are an English rock band") or in the case of certain sui generis proper nouns ("General Motors is an American multinational corporation..."). For common, regularly constructed plurals, formal agreement between the subject and verb is always expected. --Jayron32 12:16, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

It's interesting that you say this is a "lease" entered into between "landlord" and "tenant". I know you live in the States, but in England, while all leases are legally tenancies, the landlord may be described as the "lessor" and the person who takes the lease is always described as the "lessee". The differences vis - a - vis tenancies are:

• term - a lease is for quite a long time (sometimes 999 years). A tenancy is typically six months, but can "lapse" into a "monthly periodic tenancy" where the rent is paid monthly until either party gives notice. "Assured tenancies" (as opposed to "assured shorthold tenancies") are periodic tenancies which can only be brought to an end by the tenant or the court. It does this by granting an "order for possession" if certain specified criteria are met - with an "assured shorthold tenancy" the landlord is entitled to an order for possession after ending the tenancy in the prescribed manner. After service of the order for possession, the assured tenancy is brought to an end by the court bailiff ejecting the tenant. Of course, if the lessee breaches the terms of the lease the landlord can get a possession order against him also.

• payment - the lessee pays only a "ground rent", which may be quite small, after purchasing the lease. In addition there may be service charges and a liability to contribute to the cost of capital works. The tenant pays only service charges in addition to the rent.

So far as I know, if the property is mortgaged and the landlord defaults the mortgagee (moneylender)'s right to recover possession is not restricted by the failure of the tenant to sign any documentation. In one case in the High Court, a woman granted a regulated [protected] tenancy to her niece. She persuaded her to give up the regulated tenancy in exchange for a new tenancy of another house she owned. Unfortunately for the niece, the other house was mortgaged, and the owner wasn't paying the mortgage. The niece found herself on the street. 92.23.52.169 (talk) 14:17, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:47, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

is english destined to become different languages? (e.g british, american, australian..)

for the last few centuries english has stayed mostly the same language everywhere but australians and american speakers sound completely different in english. does that mean that with enough time, they will speak independent languages? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.250.20.171 (talk) 21:49, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Anything's possible, but keep in mind the massive amount of media communication that goes on in the world, and which tends to reign in significant divergence. If we'd had television 2,000 years ago, we might all be speaking Latin. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:15, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

"reign"? in. Totus orbis elit Latine loquendi. Richard Avery (talk) 06:37, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

That would be "rein". I must have been thinking of The King's English. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:04, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

When I think of the British Isles, I think of "rain". StuRat (talk) 15:17, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

According to Rayne Shoes, "royality" is now an English word. And according to Wikipedia, rain boots are Wellington boots. Just for the sake of three things, here's a Rain babality. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:11, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

They're not known as Wellingtons in New Zealand. Use 'Wellingtons' here and you'll be laughed out of the country. They're known as 'Gumboots'. And flip flops are known as 'Jandals', after an importer's trade name made up from 'Japanese sandals'. Akld guy (talk) 02:25, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Same deal as Canada. Check the pipelink. Even "rain boots" sounds a bit dumb in this neck of the woods. Galoshes forever! (Wikipedia considers those some sort of overshoe or dickerson. What's the world coming to?) InedibleHulk (talk) 02:32, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

My favorite example of that error, in some magazine long ago: ...Arafat's ability to reign in terror... —Tamfang (talk) 07:46, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

American, Australian, British, and New Zealand English will probably remain differently accented dialects of the same language as long as they remain a language, thanks to (as Bugs hinted at) the printing press, radio, TV, and the internet. Creoles (what we now call English started as just a pidgen of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French) and indigenized forms of languages are what tend to become new languages. Ian.thomson (talk) 07:08, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

You might be interested in David Crystal's elaboration on the topic in "An English family of languages?" (published in P. Griffiths, A.J. Merrison and A. Bloomer (eds), Language in Use: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2010), 200-201 (adapted from English as a Global Language), downloadable for free at Crystal's website. Here's the link to the pdf-file. ---Sluzzelin talk 07:22, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Note that Canadian and New Zealand English are also quite different from British English. I would argue that they will become more similar over time, due to spoken media, like movies and TV shows. Unfortunately for those who hate US English, the dominance of Hollywood may mean that US English becomes the norm. Also, media produced in other nations may well choose a US accent, if they want it to sell well in the US, which is a major market, but there it's a matter of degree (a slight British accent seems charming, but Cockney rhyming slang makes it so incomprehensible that it won't sell). StuRat (talk) 15:20, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Something to consider here is that the interaction between the major centers of English (US, UK & India (sorry, the rest of you are just going to get pulled along :) ) is considerably more organic than any similar effort would be in other languages. French & German Speaking countries actually hold meetings of governmental bodies to establish policy on the language, I don't think any of the three respective governments for English care nearly enough to attend.Naraht (talk) 15:38, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

An example of the convergence of the various strands of English is that in the 1980s, Phil Collins in an episode of Miami Vice was able to get away with describing another character as "a wanker" because allegedly, the director didn't know what it meant. That seems highly unlikely today. Alansplodge (talk) 22:27, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

On Married... with Children, Peg's family came from "Wanker County". StuRat (talk) 02:21, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

In the US, censors did nevermind the "bollocks". InedibleHulk (talk) 02:28, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

My best mate had an operation on his brain, and the German doctor who performed it introduced himself as Dr. Wanker. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 08:23, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Whenever I travel to and from Melbourne, I am accosted with this road sign. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:31, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Some tourists might enjoy visiting the nude beach at Gay Head substantially more than others. StuRat (talk) 17:11, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

A little more recent: in one episode of Weird Science (1994–98), Vanessa Angel used the word 'wank' (several times) in a strange way. —Tamfang (talk) 07:51, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Assuming no total global warming-induced civilisational collapse...well, all bets are off. There hasn't been a situation quite like this before in history where you can read media from any English speaking country instantly. On the other hand, sound changes are inevitable in languages - see here for a good example. Different branches of English already often have different vowel sounds, and obviously there are also versions of English learned by non-native speakers in countries where it's a common trade language but not the native language (India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Nigeria, many parts of Africa) that are relatively isolated from developments in native-language countries. For example, Indian English has created many words (not just for local terms like foods, religion and plants, but for much more universal things) that no first-language English speaker would know.
I think the safe bet is that we will end up like Latin breaking up into the Romance languages, with a "standardised", formal, mostly written form frozen in time that everyone globally understands (as the Roman Catholic church used Latin with Italian influences as its worldwide language for a millennium and a half after Latin had ceased to be a natural language), even while sound shifts mean that what people actually speak no longer sounds like this. Indeed, in many ways this has already begun, even for fundamental parts of the language: how many times do you say "Yes" versus "Yeah"? But what do people write down on a form? Blythwood (talk) 10:19, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

In the grand scheme of things, yes is the anomaly, considering that "yeah" would've been better understood 600 or 800 years ago, or even before anyone was speaking Anglish. Yes is (effectively) a heavily slurred "yeah it is." Ian.thomson (talk) 10:32, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Let's not forget the Wankel engine, supposedly to the internal combustion engine what the Dyson was to the Hoover, but it never caught on. 92.23.52.169 (talk) 11:57, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

You mean the Wankel engine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.107.62.251 (talk) 17:57, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

I mean the Wankel engine--178.107.62.251 (talk) 18:00, 7 May 2016 (UTC)