"most of them IS..." or "most of them ARE...&

Amurrio   Sat Nov 26, 2005 12:11 pm GMT
I am not sure... How do you say it in English?

"most of them IS..." or "most of them ARE..."?

I mean, "most of" is singular, but "them" (they) is plural... Then "IS" oder "ARE"? I think plural is here much more usual, isn't it?
Ben   Sat Nov 26, 2005 12:18 pm GMT
You would say:

"Most of them are..........." because in that sentence you are referring to is 'them' and that indicates that there's more than one of them- i.e. plural

Ben.
Uriel   Sat Nov 26, 2005 8:23 pm GMT
You would use are, and most usually implies a plural, so it usually takes the plural form of a verb: "These flowers come in many colors, but MOST ARE some shade of pink.
jay   Tue Apr 24, 2007 12:21 pm GMT
Noway

"Most" makes the subject uncountable, so is should be right.
Travis   Tue Apr 24, 2007 1:20 pm GMT
I would definitely say "most of them are"; while I am not going to categorically state that "most of them is" is wrong, just because someone's dialect may have it, I will say that I do not think it is used at all in any of the standard varieties of English that I know of, besides that it seems "wrong" subjectively.
24NI   Tue Apr 24, 2007 2:03 pm GMT
Travis is right; I have never encountered "most is."
Lazar   Tue Apr 24, 2007 11:35 pm GMT
<<"most of them IS..." or "most of them ARE..."?>>

In my speech and in the major standard dialects, you would have to say "most of them are".

<<I mean, "most of" is singular,>>

No, it's not singular here. (Although it could be singular if you were talking about only one thing, or an uncountable thing: "most of the day", "most of the spaghetti".) Google provides millions of examples of sentences containing "most are", referring to multiple persons or things.
David   Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:27 am GMT
Absolute descriptivism is accepting every form uttered by a native speaker as ipso facto correct. Travis goes one better than this. I am not sure what to name it: hypothetical absolute descriptivism: accepting every form that someone's dialect MIGHT have, even though we have no evidence there is a dialect that has that.

I cannot say that the plural of ox is not oxen - just in case someone somewhere at some point in time has said otherwise - in which case I would be transgressing absolute descriptivism.

Laughing out loud!!
Liz   Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:00 am GMT
David, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
Guest   Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:14 am GMT
He does. David makes perfect sense. What bit of absolute descriptivism did you not understand?
Liz   Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:27 am GMT
I undestand perfectly well what he wants to say but it's the most egregious nonsense I've ever heard / read. What he advocates is absolute prescriptivism, which is outdated and makes no sense, and is MUCH worse than what you (and he) call absolute descriptivism. Furthermore, he is *slightly* missing the point. Full stop.
Liz   Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:36 am GMT
<<accepting every form that someone's dialect MIGHT have, even though we have no evidence there is a dialect that has that.>>

No-one accepts forms that don't exist. You are making this argument up.
Guest   Mon Apr 30, 2007 10:03 am GMT
>>I undestand perfectly well what he wants to say but it's the most egregious nonsense I've ever heard / read. What he advocates is absolute prescriptivism, which is outdated and makes no sense, and is MUCH worse than what you (and he) call absolute descriptivism. Furthermore, he is *slightly* missing the point. Full stop.<<

From one extreme to the other.

Where in his post does he advocate absolute prescriptivism? Maybe you can't see the funny side of the idea of (hypothetical) absolute descriptivism which he picks out justly.

From egregious nonsense to slightly missing the point. You can't seem to make up your mind on how to judge him.
Liz   Mon Apr 30, 2007 12:33 pm GMT
<<From egregious nonsense to slightly missing the point. You can't seem to make up your mind on how to judge him.>>

I meant "slightly" ironically, hence the *...*.

I wouldn't judge him based on his above message only, but unfortunately I've read some of his other messages too, which were clearly advocating prescriptivism.
Josh Lalonde   Mon Apr 30, 2007 1:00 pm GMT
The point that I assume Travis was making above is that 'most of them is...' is incorrect in most varieties of English, including all the standard ones; however, there may be varieties in which it is correct. I think it might be acceptable in AAVE, but I'm not sure.