The Russian pianist Nikolai Demidenko is one of those artists who does not attempt something unless it can be done differently (Straits Times, Life! supplement, 19 June 2009).
It is natural to think that a singular verb should follow one of ..., but in reality the verb is always plural. Here’s how it works:
The underlined constituent in the quoted sentence is a noun phrase, with the structure one of X.
If I were to ask, ‘One of what?’, your answer would be: those artists who do not attempt something unless it can be done differently.
Now, it should be obvious that there’s a relative clause postmodifying artists, and since the relative pronoun who refers to artists, the verb that follows should be plural.
No comments:
Post a Comment