grammar - "At least one" - singular or plural subject?



In other words, which sentence is correct?



At least one of them is not coming.


At least one of them are not coming.




Answer



In English, grammatical number often follows the form of the sentence rather than its meaning, especially in cases where the meaning allows for a variable number in the subject. In those cases, the verb usually agrees with the syntactic number of the closest subject noun instead of the meaning of the whole noun phrase.


For example:



Some of them are not coming.
One or more of them are not coming.



These sentences means the same thing as your example. They both use a plural verb because the nearest subject nouns, some and more, are plural.


However, in your example, the nearest noun is singular:



At least one of them is not coming.



Therefore, the verb follows the same (singular) form as the noun, even though the noun phrase in the subject allows for the possibility of more than one.


Note that this rule affects both the number and person of the verb:



Either those jerks or I am not coming.



In this case, the verb is the first-person singular am because the nearest subject noun is the first-person singular I. However, many people would find this construction awkward and rewrite the sentence in a more natural way, perhaps:



Either those jerks aren't coming, or I'm not.



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