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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Why do we use plural noun and verb forms to agree with "zero"? Consider:
Zero sparrows were seen today, but we saw one robin. Zero of seven lymph nodes on the right were positive for metastatic cancer, but one of eight lymph nodes on the right was positive. Seven of nine Borg prefer the taste of Mentos. ha ha trekkie humor Not one person thinks Joe is nice.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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good question! ~ perhaps because we are actually eliding the full sentence?
for example, we could back-form your first example to:
Zero (of the)sparrows were seen today, but we saw one robin.
But somehow putting 'zero' in some of these constructions seems unhandy to me in any case.
others?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Because, used the way you have used it, it is a plural quantity regardless of its inherent number, just like "bushels of wheat" ... simple, see?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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However, you can say
no sparrows were, or no sparrow was
but not
zero sparrow was.
The Only WO'N!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Zero (of the) sparrows were found dead. Yes but sparrows here is the object of a preposition, not the subject of the sentence. "None" is singular because it stands in place of "not one." Therefore, "None of the passengers was found" is correct, although it sounds awkward and the use of "were" is more or less forgivable. But take out the prepositional phrase of the passengers and you still have the sentence "None was found." (One episode of the "Beavis and Butthead" show had Butthead praising his favorite rock band thusly: "These guys rock. There is none higher.") But getting back to zero... Really zero is neither singular nor plural, mathematically speaking, since it is neither one nor many. To assign it any case is arbitrary, and plural seems to work as well as as singular. perhaps a more rigorous language would have a unique case for zero, but our languages evolved faster than our understanding of the concept of zero, so probably we were already set in our ways when it came on the scene. For a very interesting essay on The History of Zero, see http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Zero.htmlNow then, next question: what is tat and where do I get some?
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Carpal Tunnel
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yes, this is a yart.. so kill me..
tat is interesting.. and tatting, is a kind of lacemaking, made with a bobbin and shuttle (not pillow lace-- which is the most elaborate kind of lace)
tatting is done in a series of linked loops, and is actually a series of hitches, and half hitches (for those who know their knots!) the loops can be connected to a mesh, which is made identically to fish netting, only in minature.. (tatting thread is slightly thicker than sewing thread!)
but i suspect this is not the tat you care about (to tat is a verb, and sometimes crossword word, to make lace)
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but sparrows here is the object of a preposition, not the subject of the sentence
I disagree - that may be the gramatical analysis, but the analysis of meaning suggests that it is the sparrows under discussion and therefore central to any question that may have caused this strange utterance to be made: for example, "How many of the sparrows were killed?"
But I would return to the central point of style above all - it sounds awkward because it attempts to couple a precise mathematical term to the sentence in an unlikely syntax. The more natural way would surely be either to render the general sense with 'none', as you mention, or to put the precise term in its singular state by not jangling it with the plural noun: eg, "The number of sparrows killed was zero."
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Well, for a 1970s definition of TAT by usage, consider Queen Bitch by David Bowie, one of the great songs ...
I'm up on the eleventh floor And I'm watching the cruisers below He's down on the street And he's trying hard to pull sister Flo Oh, my heart's in the basement My weekend's at an all time low 'Cause she's hoping to score So I can't see her letting him go Walk out of her heart Walk out of her mind
She's so swishy in her satin and tat In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat Oh God, I could do better than that
She's an old-time ambassador Of sweet talking, night walking games And she's known in the darkest clubs For pushing ahead of the dames If she says she can do it Then she can do it, she don't make false claims But she's a Queen, and such are queens That your laughter is sucked in their brains Now she's leading him on And she'll lay him right down Yes she's leading him on And she'll lay him right down But it could have been me Yes, it could have been me Why didn't I say, why didn't I say, no, no, no
She's so swishy in her satin and tat In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat Oh God, I could do better than that
So I lay down a while And I look at my hotel wall Oh the cot is so cold It don't feel like no bed at all Yeah I lay down a while And I look at my hotel wall But he's down on the street So I throw both his bags down the hall And I'm phoning a cab 'Cause my stomach feels small There's a taste in my mouth And it's no taste at all It could have been me Oh yeah, it could have been me Why didn't I say, Why didn't I say, no, no, no
She's so swishy in her satin and tat In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat Oh God, I could do better than that
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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