grammatical number - has vs have on a singular noun that represents a plural idea



In the sentence:



I suspect 99% of the world’s population has never even heard of the term ‘Deep Learning’.



is the 'has' correct, or should it be 'have'?



Answer



I would say that "has" is correct, and doesn't need to be replaced with "have". That's not to say that "have" is necessarily incorrect. Some people might prefer "have" because it is somewhat awkward to apply the concept of "not having heard" of something to a group rather than to its individual members.


I think that my answer to a deleted question about the sentence “I find it good that 50% of the American population (are or is) cool” is relevant, so I have re-posted it below:"


Singular agreement seems to be more common with "X% of the population"


The Google Ngram Viewer seems to indicate that both agreement patterns are in use, but that "...percent of the population is" is notably more common than "...percent of the population are" (and to a lesser degree, "...cent of the population is..." is more common than "...cent of the population are..."):


enter image description here


Also, "is" sounds more natural to me in this case. (I can imagine dividing the population into two parts, and saying "this part of the population is cool; that part of the population is uncool." So it seems clear that "is cool" can sometimes be used as a predicate after an expression referring to a group of people, and this seems to me like a situation where it would be appropriate.)


But unsurprisingly, it seems that not everybody shares my opinion on that: Jim left a comment saying



I seem to prefer ’are’. When thinking about it I removed ‘of the American population’ and it seems like with ’are’ the statement is about the people behind the number, and with ’is’ the statement is about the figure (50%) itself.



I would generally recommend singular agreement, especially in a case like this where the verb is just the copula and the predicate is an adjective like "cool" that doesn't imply any particular grammatical number.


I don't think the type of predicate makes a big difference


I would hesitate more with predicates that contain noun phrases that seem to imply a particualar grammatical number, like "drives a red car"/"drives red cars". Actually, predicates that contain noun phrases often pose tricky questions about grammatical number in general: e.g. the problem of whether to say things like "they all nodded their head" or "they all nodded their heads", where some people think the first sounds like they all share one collective head and other people think the second sounds like they each have multiple heads.


I tend to be in favor of using plural noun phrases in this kind of context, but I don't think that means that the verb has to be plural. I actually think I would be in favor of using a singular verb and a plural noun phrase in most cases, like "XX% of the population drives red cars". I can see why somebody might feel like that sounds odd, but there is no rule that requires a verb to have the same grammatical number as any noun phrases contained in the verb phrase (see Agreement in "[Singular Noun] Is/Are [Plural Noun]"?).


Since my preferences are already in favor of singular verb agreement by default, I didn't think at first about situations where notional agreement principles would cause singular agreement to be more likely than usual. But I think there are some circumstances where this is the case: a sentence like "50% of the American population is a large amount of people" seems to require singular verb agreement.


Also, singular verb agreement seems necessary in at least some circumstances, but not all, for an author who does choose to use a singular noun phrase in the predicate. While "XX% of the population drive a red car" sounds kind of OK to me (and similar sentences are attested in the wild, like "56 percent of Americans have a profile on a social networking site"), something like "XX% of the population are a felon" sounds completely wrong to me: I would say it has to be "XX% of the population are felons", "XX% of the population is felons" or "XX% of the population is a felon" (my preference is for one of the first two because the last seems illogical to me, but constructions like "XX% of Y is a Z" do seem to have some use, and aren't anywhere near as jarring to my ear as "XX% of Y are a Z").


Example quotes:





  • About 32 out of every 1000 people is a twin. (the twin project @ the university of texas)



    (notes: while "people" is unambiguously a plural count noun in this context, it is an irregular plural, which may facilate the use of this agreement pattern. I wouldn't recommend it, just wanted to show it is out there)





  • the remaining portions of the population are a mix of Serbs, Hungarians, and Gypsies. ("A Deeper Understanding of Croatia’s Culture", by MARILYN VILLANUEVA)



    (notes: this was one of the only examples I could find of the sequence "of the population are a", and note that the following phrase, despite starting with the indefinite singular article "a", is really plural in signification: "a mix of [plural nouns]")




Links and quotations


I found some discussion of the matter on other sites; here are some quotations that I thought were relevant (still being updated):



Here is also what Martin Hewings says, in English Grammar in Use, unit 52, about that point.


After per cent (also percent or %) we use a singular verb:


"¢ An inflation rate of only 2 per cent makes a big difference to exports.


"¢ Around 10 per cent of the forest is destroyed each year.


However, in phrases where we can use of + plural noun we use a plural verb:


"¢ I would say that about 50 per cent of the houses need major repairs.


"¢ Of those interviewed, only 20 per cent (= of people interviewed) admit to smoking.


But where we use a singular noun that can be thought of either as a whole unit or a collection of individuals, we can use a singular or plural verb (see also Unit 51B):


"¢ Some 80 per cent of the electorate is expected to vote, (or ...are expected...)



(Grammar Q & A Newsgroup, "2 percent is/are?", posted October 01, 2008 10:39 AM by Izzy loves you all)


There is also a document about subject-verb agreement from the old "Yale Graduate School Writing Center" floating around (I couldn't find it on their current site) that gives



21% of the population is poor



as an example of the rule



When an –of phrase follows a percentage, distance, fraction, or amount, the verb agrees with the noun closest to the verb.



I wouldn't rely on either of these, but I think they support the idea that singular agreement is acceptable (and the first supports the idea that plural agreement is acceptable).



Other relevant questions:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

Years and years ago, I remember reading in a book on AmE usage that the phrasal turn a baby creeps before it walks was to some extent more common to AmE than to BrE, which preferred exclusively the "crawl" version. And so, I just recently checked on the accuracy of that information on NGram Viewer , and it actually was fact... more than a century ago! What I would like you to tell is if it would sound sort of weird to hear someone say today in the US that a child "creeps" before walking and running (see Synonyms ) rather than it crawls. Also, what's the story to those terms? How did "to crawl" come to prevail and supersede "to creep" to describe the way a baby moves around? As with a plant, so with a child. His mind grows by natural stages. A child creeps before he walks , sits before he stands, cries before he laughs, babbles before he talks, draws a circle before he draws a square, lies before he tells the truth, and is selfish before he
Read more

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

Does this sentence have too many subjunctives? If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries. I am stumped by this sentence construction. First, there is "Let it be," which is a common English idiomatic phrase, but then it follows another subjunctive. Is that to say you can actually have a subjunctive followed by another subjunctive? Also, why does the sentence use "please"? If that's the subjunctive tense there, then why is it followed by another subjunctive instead of a conditional, or maybe "Let it be" is the conditional? Lastly, I wish to know how the that is used in the sentence. Perhaps, the simplified sentence can be restated like so: Let it be decreed that they be destroyed and that they may put it into the king's treasuries. If not, maybe the simplified sent
Read more

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

I've been reading William Manchester's book "American Caesar", which is about Douglas MacArthur, and I found that he uses a strange convention for pluralizing the family name. When talking about the MacArthurs as a whole, he writes MacArthur' with an apostrophe, as in "After the war, the MacArthur' lived in Tokyo while the general was proconsul" (yes, he uses that term to describe him). I have never seen or heard of a rule that would prescribe this. Manchester is a bit old-timey in his style: for example, he also writes "in behalf of" instead of "on behalf of", which is the only one I have ever seen. So perhaps this is similar. Where does he get this apostrophe from? Edit: There seems to be some difficulty finding examples, which is odd. Here is a direct link to a page from Google Books that shows the apostrophe.
Read more

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

This is a phrase I’m particularly confused about, because it’s used often when something is manipulated or changed. For example, sometimes images surface online that are clearly Photoshopped, but people refer to them as “doctored” images. Why use the word “doctored” here? Answer The earliest Google Books match for an instance of doctored in a transitional (or perhaps post-transitional) sense between "amended" and "adulterated" appears in William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Glocestershire; Including Its Dairy: Together with the Dairy Management of North Wiltshire, and the Management of Orchards and Fruit Liquor, in Herefordshire , volume 2 (1789): Men in general, however, whose palates are set to rough cider, consider the common sweet sort as an effeminate beverage; and rough cider, properly manufactured, is probably the most generous liquor; being deemed more wholesome, to habits in general, than sweet cider:—even when genuine. That which is drank, in the kingd
Read more

phrases - Somebody is gonna kiss the donkey

I heard this phrase when I was watching Battleship. An old man said, "Somebody is gonna kiss the donkey." I do not know what it means, I only heard it in a movie. What is this phrase mean? In Addition: I think it was Rihanna who said "Saddle Ridge will be in weapons range in five minutes," then the old man stated the phrase. Answer It is a confused attempt at a play on (for example) "kiss my ass," or, some similar phrase. It is quite common in English today that idioms get mangled.
Read more

typography - When a dagger is used to indicate a note, must it come after an asterisk?

The typographical symbol dagger (†) has several meanings. Possibly its most common use is as a footnote marker. According to You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies ( Partridge , 1953), when it is used for this purpose, it must be used for second footnotes only; the first footnote should be indicated by an asterisk (*), the third a double dagger (‡) and further footnotes other symbols or numbers. Where does Patridge's rule fall on a scale of one to ten, where one is "this is just one guy's random opinion" and ten is "this is a widely accepted rule of English and any deviation from it is unarguably incorrect"? This question was inspired by this Meta Stack Overflow question about the use of daggers on Stack Exchange site FAQ pages . Answer The dagger (also known as an obelisk ) is properly used for the second footnote. The asterisk is for the first, and the double dagger is for the third. This is supported by several websites: And so
Read more

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

What is the origin of the phrase shit eating grin ? How did it come to mean showing smugness or self-satisfaction of an individual's actions? Answer From the Urban Dictionary: ...these uses are documented in the Oxford English Dictionary no earlier than 1957 There have been similar expressions used quite far back: In Book XXI of his History of Rome, Livy describes a Carthaginian sect of coprophages, the risus faecivorus, or shit-eating grin, being commonly displayed by its adherents. Although, its origin is undetermined, they may have been incidents which caused the invention of this phrase. Below is an excerpt: "1944 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. XCIX. 959 Among demented patients in advanced stages of their illness,..it is not rare to see some of them grasp their own feces, chew them and eat them often with great pleasure and satisfaction (coprophagia).
Read more