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Sorry, completely disagree with Ms Straus. Balderdash! The verb MUST agree with its subject, not the noun in a PP. He is one of the men who does/do the work.If you take away the PP, you get He is one who does/do the work.Clearly, the subject is singular, so the choice of verb must be as well: He is one who does the work.The existence of the PP (adjectival clause) which describes this particular he doesn't change a dad-burned thing! Oooooh, noooooo. What have I done? This is probably unenlightened non-self interest ... 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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I don't agree, CK. seems to me that the PP in this case is "of the men who do the work"... it's an adjectival clause modifying "one". similarly, "who do the work" modifies "men".
The verb MUST agree with its subject, not the noun in a PP.
yes, and in this case the verb (is) is indeed in agreement with the subject.... "He is one."
would not the sentence, in diagram form, show "men who do the work" as the prepositional object, with "who do the work" as the participle phrase modifying the noun "men"?
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I have not thought this through fully, but could not the sentence be read in either of two ways:
- He is one (of the men) who do/does the work.
- He is one of (the men who do/does the work).
The verb form would be singular in the former reading, and plural in the latter.
And it would seem to me that there's a subtle difference in meaning between the two sentences, though I cannot put my finger on it. Comments?
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If we vary the example, I think we can bring out a difference between the two forms.
Bali is one of the Indonesian islands which is visited by many tourists.
Bali is one of the Indonesian islands which are visited by many tourists.
It seems to me that in the first sentence we are given two pieces of information about Bali. It is an Indonesian island and it is visited by many tourists. In the second sentence, however, we are told that Bali is one of the Indonesian islands and that those Indonesian islands are visited by many tourists.
Bingley
Bingley
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Bali is one of the Indonesian islands which is visited by many tourists.
Bali is one of the Indonesian islands which are visited by many tourists.
Bingley makes a good point here. In the original example about the women who likes football, in the one case we are saying that all the women like football, in the other case we are only saying that the one woman likes football; about the others we are making no such overt claim. They are damned only by implication.
Of course these fine distinctions are lost because of the lax standards of present day grammar. It's not unlike our former ability to distinguish meanings between she likes him better than me and she likes him better than I. If we feel we have to make those distinctions we must be more explicit in voicing them.
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Sticking to my story. I see no need to start looking for different meanings in a sentence to justify a particular grammatical interpretation of it, I'm afraid.
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...looking for different meanings in a sentence to justify...
Are you saying that the different meanings would justify the grammatical interpretation or that the purpose of your looking is to justify the interpretation?
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Neither. As you well know!
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Faldage may, but I don't. Since this was on-board, not PM, you've only added to my humble confusion; could you please elucidate? [abject -e]
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