has or have

one . . . has. The other side of the debate must be in awe of lawyers.

See, I would have gone "have", and this link seems to back me up.

LJD said:

See, I would have gone "have", and this link seems to back me up.

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Great article, LJD. I agree: 'have'.

Interesting and enlightening and one of the reasons I love this section.

AnWulf said:

This is from an online quiz on grammar. In the comments for the quiz there is a strong debate as to which is right.


Fill in the blank with ‘has’ or ‘have’.
'Fitzwilliam is one of those lawyers who ______ been with the firm a long time.'

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Lawyers who__________been with the firm for a long time.

Fitzwilliam is simply part of this group.

Definitely "have". Lawyers is the antecedent of "who".

Another vote for "have." Diagramming of the sentence (adapted for plain text formatting ) leads to:

Fitzwilliam | is | one"Who have been" modifies "lawyers." It's like saying, "Fitzwilliam is one of the rich lawyers" -- the modifier "rich" applies to all the lawyers in the group (plural) that Fitzwilliam is a part of, not just to Fitzwilliam himself. This modifier works the same way.

p.s. -- I'm betting people are getting mixed up with sentence constructions like this:

"Each of the lawyers has been here a long time." In this case, "each" is singular and "of the lawyers" modifies "each." The diagram:

Each | has beenIn this case, "has been" has the subject "each." In the original example, "have been" had the subject "who," and, as another poster pointed out, the antecedent of "who" in the OP was "lawyers," not "one" or "Fitzwilliam" -- so it was the plural version of the pronoun and needed the verb "have."

Subject-verb agreement often gets tricky and confusing in sentences with dependent clauses, like this example. My initial thought was: Does the context already establish that Fitzwilliam is a lawyer? If so, you don't even need the "was one of those lawyers who" verbiage.

caw

blacbird said:

Subject-verb agreement often gets tricky and confusing in sentences with dependent clauses, like this example.

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Good point, but "tricky and confusing" was the purpose of the question, and therein lies the fun.

... sentence is too complex for me to use to begin with.
I go with that KISS motto when it comes to writing.
So it's a non-issue, which is good as I couldn't say for sure which is correct.

Has? Have? Has? Have?

Actually, you could make a case for either one. If you're talking about Fitzwilliam specifically, the clause is singular, but if you're including him with the class of veteran attorneys, the clause is plural. Technically, the clause should be plural, since it modifies lawyers, but in certain contexts it could be understood to modify Fitzwilliam.

Russell Secord said:

Actually, you could make a case for either one. If you're talking about Fitzwilliam specifically, the clause is singular, but if you're including him with the class of veteran attorneys, the clause is plural. Technically, the clause should be plural, since it modifies lawyers, but in certain contexts it could be understood to modify Fitzwilliam.

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Hmm, can you give an example of when it could be understood to modify "Fitzwilliam"? I don't see it at all. Not without completely changing the sentence . . .

I'm curious what you see. (And welcome to AW!)

This is basic English. Has is the correct answer. "Of those lawyers" is a prepositional phrase, and not a part of the subject-predicate part of the sentence. Without it, the sentence reads: Fitzwilliam is one who ______ been with the firm a long time. From that, we easily deduce that "has" is the correct word.

And if there is any further doubt, look at the subject of the sentence. Is the subject "Fitzwilliam", or is the subject "of those lawyers"? The subject is obviously "Fitzwilliam", and therefore the verb has to match the subject: Fitzwilliam has been with the firm a long time.

Jonathan Dalar said:

This is basic English. Has is the correct answer. "Of those lawyers" is a prepositional phrase, and not a part of the subject-predicate part of the sentence. Without it, the sentence reads: Fitzwilliam is one who ______ been with the firm a long time. From that, we easily deduce that "has" is the correct word.

And if there is any further doubt, look at the subject of the sentence. Is the subject "Fitzwilliam", or is the subject "of those lawyers"? The subject is obviously "Fitzwilliam", and therefore the verb has to match the subject: Fitzwilliam has been with the firm a long time.

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Nope, this is incorrect -- "is" is the verb that matches the subject "Fitzwilliam," and it is indeed singular, as it should be. "Of the lawyers" might be a prepositional phrase, but "who have been at the firm a long time" is a modifier of "lawyers," so if you remove the prepositional phrase from the sentence you must remove the modifier of "lawyers" as well, leaving you with "Fitzwilliam is one" -- a correct sentence but one which is meaningless in answering this question.

Chase said:

Good point, but "tricky and confusing" was the purpose of the question, and therein lies the fun.

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I HATE "tricky and confusing", both as a reader and as a writer. In the writing arena, "tricky and confusing" is not fun. The major point of writing is communication, which is an interaction between writer and reader. Anything that provides an obstacle to this interaction is bad, even if it might be grammatically correct.

caw

That is so true.

Chase said:

Good point, but "tricky and confusing" was the purpose of the question, and therein lies the fun.

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blacbird said:

I HATE "tricky and confusing", both as a reader and as a writer. In the writing arena, "tricky and confusing" is not fun. The major point of writing is communication, which is an interaction between writer and reader. Anything that provides an obstacle to this interaction is bad, even if it might be grammatically correct.

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Though I agree with you in a larger sense, Blacbird, I'm with Chase -- I think grammar can be fun for its own sake. Even if it's grammar that would be unwise to use in a book because of its trickiness and confusingness!

I love discussing and breaking down grammar. Probably it comes from being into mathematics and theoretical computer science -- there's something deeply satisfying to me about teasing out order from the chaos. When it's confusing enough, it hits my pleasure centers the same way code-breaking does. So, is tricky good for writing? Almost never. But is discussing it fun? Well, I think it is!

blacbird said:

I HATE "tricky and confusing", both as a reader and as a writer. In the writing arena, "tricky and confusing" is not fun. The major point of writing is communication, which is an interaction between writer and reader. Anything that provides an obstacle to this interaction is bad, even if it might be grammatically correct.

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Good sermon to the straw choir, but I'm sure most understood the fun part is the discussion here, not in obscuring our writing.

slhuang said:

Hmm, can you give an example of when it could be understood to modify "Fitzwilliam"? I don't see it at all. Not without completely changing the sentence . . .

I'm curious what you see. (And welcome to AW!)

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Good to be here!

The confusion is mainly because we're dealing with semantics, not just grammar. Who is a pronoun with an antecedent, but which one depends on context.

Suppose the example is the response to a question: "What is the name of a senior partner at Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe?" The answer is Fitzwilliam/one (they're interchangeable), and who resolves to that. The other information is less important, that is, you could answer, "Fitzwilliam," and satisfy the question. To put it another way, the information about seniority applies to Fitzwilliam as an individual, while of those lawyers only identifies him as a member of a certain group, so you could leave out that phrase.

Now suppose there was a different question: "Has that guy been here long?" The answer supplies his name and profession, but that's not the information requested. You can't answer, "Fitzwilliam," and satisfy this question. We want to know if that guy is a senior partner, so the information that modifies lawyers is more important.

If that's not clear enough, we can try something else.

By the way, in a previous life I was a professional copyeditor. That means a) I know English grammar extremely well, b) I don't take it personally when someone disagrees with me or shows where I'm wrong, c) I know there are cases where there is no single correct answer, and d) the editor is always right.

blacbird said:

I HATE "tricky and confusing", both as a reader and as a writer. In the writing arena, "tricky and confusing" is not fun. The major point of writing is communication, which is an interaction between writer and reader. Anything that provides an obstacle to this interaction is bad, even if it might be grammatically correct.

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I agree, up to a point. Sometimes the writer may want some ambiguity. Poetry is full of ambiguity. In fiction an unreliable narrator, to name one instance, is deliberately "tricky and confusing."

Totally unambiguous is great if you're writing computer code or nonfiction. I've done both. There the goal is communication. The goal in fiction is entertainment, and ambiguity is just another tool in your box.

slhuang said:

Nope, this is incorrect -- "is" is the verb that matches the subject "Fitzwilliam," and it is indeed singular, as it should be. "Of the lawyers" might be a prepositional phrase, but "who have been at the firm a long time" is a modifier of "lawyers," so if you remove the prepositional phrase from the sentence you must remove the modifier of "lawyers" as well, leaving you with "Fitzwilliam is one" -- a correct sentence but one which is meaningless in answering this question.

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Bingo! It is unfortunate that English has shed most of its inflected forms. If it had not, then "who" would be in a plural form and then there would be no question.

Russell Secord said:

Actually, you could make a case for either one. If you're talking about Fitzwilliam specifically, the clause is singular, but if you're including him with the class of veteran attorneys, the clause is plural. Technically, the clause should be plural, since it modifies lawyers, but in certain contexts it could be understood to modify Fitzwilliam.

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No, only "have" works here. If you change who or what you're talking about, the entire sentence needs rewritten.

Russell Secord said:

I agree, up to a point. Sometimes the writer may want some ambiguity. Poetry is full of ambiguity. In fiction an unreliable narrator, to name one instance, is deliberately "tricky and confusing."

Totally unambiguous is great if you're writing computer code or nonfiction. I've done both. There the goal is communication. The goal in fiction is entertainment, and ambiguity is just another tool in your box.

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And poor grammar is a dull tool that gets you rejected.