Posted by Jonathan on April 17, 2003, at 22:23:35
In reply to Re: Grammatical error on PSB » Tabitha, posted by IsoM on April 17, 2003, at 19:54:50
> Nope - a bunch is singular, while the word "boards" is plural, a bunch means just that - "a" bunch or only one bunch hence "there is" is correct.
That's exactly what I thought when I first read Tabitha's post: "there is a bunch of bananas; there are two bunches of bananas".
Then I gave more thought to the problem, and particularly to Tabitha's real motive for posting it (which is obviously to entice BeardedLady to return from her self-imposed exile: a motive which I strongly support because her erudition and defence of the English language made this bunch of boards a much better place). From that perspective, it immediately becomes clear that Tabitha's question cannot be as simple as it first appeared.
For example, suppose we simply replace the collective noun "bunch" with another collective noun, "number". "There is a number of other boards here" definitely sounds wrong to me, while "there are a number of other boards here" sounds okay. Why should replacing "bunch" with "number" make any difference, if it does? Is this the same grammatical phenomenon that causes the singular verb (flies) to become a plural verb (like) when we replace two nouns in the sentence "time flies like an arrow", transforming it into "fruit flies like a banana"?
Although "there is a number of other boards" sounds wrong, I think it would actually have been grammatically correct when the Social Board was created in August 2000: at that time the number of other boards was one, the original Psycho-Babble Board. Perhaps the sentence was written then and never updated when the six (or seven?) newer boards were added to the bunch?
There's also the intriguing question whether the mysterious Tele Board, which is not listed at the top of Social as one of the "bunch of other boards", belongs to a separate bunch of its own. If it does, there are (not "is") actually two bunches of other boards.
The only thing I'm sure about is that we need BeardedLady's grammatical genius.
poster:Jonathan
thread:220096
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20030404/msgs/220234.html