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From: groos@ifspm.unizh.ch (Malgorzata Roos)
Subject: "A is B" - which is subject ?
Message-ID: <1995May29.184307.11341@rzu-news.unizh.ch>
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Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 18:43:07 GMT
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Some time ago, <75274.564@CompuServe.COM> (TVincoeur) [TV] wrote:

TV> A current beer commercial uses the phrase 

(1) "All you need's a few real ones." 

TV> God forbid I should take English lessons from
TV> television, but hearing this made me realize I'm probably
TV> incorrect in using "are a few."  Logically, it should be
TV> singular, no?  There *is* a few friends of mine who would like
TV> this clarified as well.  (Cringe.)  Please help if you can.

peter@statsci.com (Peter Schumacher) [PS] replied:

PS> Don't worry, you are right and the beer commercial is wrong. 
PS> All is right in heaven and on earth. My abridged OED clearly 
PS> indicates that "few" is plural.

[ comments about difficulties in number agreement with "a lot of"
  and similar pseudo-numerals deleted ]

coby@euler.Berkeley.EDU (Coby (Jacob) Lubliner) [CL] wrote:

CL> PS> Don't worry, you are right and the beer commercial is wrong. 
CL> PS> All is right in heaven and on earth. My abridged OED clearly 
CL> PS> indicates that "few" is plural.

CL> That isn't the point.  In this case, the subject is not "a few" but
                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CL> "all you need", and "all" is singular unless it is previously known
CL> to be plural (as in "there are four windows, and all are open").

As a native speaker of Polish, I am especially sensitive to questions 
of "subjecthood" in "equation-like" sentences, and I intuitively tend 
to regard "a few" as subject.
My husband, who is a native speaker of German, agrees with me - based 
on his intuition: he gave the following translation:
"Alles, was du brauchst, *sind* ein paar richtige [Glaeser Bier]"

So both of as would accept "... are a few ...".

= = = = =

For readers of the group sci.lang, to which this article is cross-posted, 
I add some more details:

By "equation-like" sentences I mean the type

   something1 *is* something2       [also referred to as NP-V(be)-NP]

In Polish, there are two main types of such constructions, one of them 
clearly marking (by attaching different case endings) the predicate 
part as opposed to the subject part: the subj. is in the nominative 
case, whereas the pred. is in the instrumental case:

(2) Polska jest najpiekniejszym krajem.
    -nom--      --------instr--------- 
(3) Najpiekniejszym krajem jest Polska.
    -----instr------------      -nom-- 

second type, of less interest here:
(4) Warszawa, to [jest] stolica Polski
(5) Stolica Polski, to [jest] Warszawa

Note that word order is primarily determined by pragmatics: The topic 
tends to be placed at the beginning of a sentence, the focus at the end.

When constructing a Polish sentence of the first type, one must decide 
which side of the equation is the subject.
In other langs, such as English or German, there is usually no need 
to decide - except in cases where the two NPs do not agree in number: 
then the copula typically agrees with the subject.
This is a special case of the "number agreement test", which can be 
used to find the subject in a given sentence:
- Replace an NP that might be subj with an NP of the opposite number.
- If the verb also switches number, then the NP under consideration
  is the subj.

English word order is determined by different trends, which may
conflict or not:
- basic word order is SVO
- topics tend to be made subject

In (1), I think both trends suggest to native speakers of English 
that the *first* NP is the subject.

Questions to linguists:

1) Is my reasoning sound?

2) Are there other languages besides Polish that formally distinguish 
   subj from pred in "equation" sentences?

The only case I remember is Breton, which uses different preverbal
particles or forms of the verb "to be", depending on the position of 
the subj relative to the verb:

(6) Yannig a vo pesketour.
(7) Pesketour e vo Yannig.

Both sentences mean "John will be a fisherman", and *Yannig* clearly 
is the subject in both. Subjects and direct objects preceding the
verb are marked by preverbal *a*, other components by preverbal *e*.

Focus typically is sentence-initial, whereas topic tends to final 
position, so questions corresponding to (6) and (7) are:
(6Q) Who will be a fisherman?
(7Q) What will John be?
--
Malgorzata Roos, University of Zurich
groos@ifspm.unizh.ch
