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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 February 2

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February 2

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Use of singular when describing action of plural.

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I was thinking about these sentences:

  1. All team members were hoping to get to get a feather in their caps.
  2. All team members were hoping to get to get a feather in their cap.
  3. All team members were hoping to get to get feathers in their caps.

I have highlighted the singular parts. To me (British) 1 looks correct, 2 looks as if they might have one jointly owned cap, and 3 as though they may get more than one feather each. The same thing applies to other sentences, e.g. "All drivers should get a ticket from the machine and clearly display it in their windscreens". However I am not sure what grammar rule I am following, and logically thinking perhaps 3 should be correct as there are obviously multiple caps and feathers being discussed! Can anyone enlighten me to the grammar rules of this type of sentence ?-- Q Chris (talk) 13:39, 2 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Each cap is getting 1 feather, not multiple feathers. So, feathers should not be plural. The real solution is to make it singular: "Each team member was hoping to get a feather in his cap." 209.149.113.5 (talk) 14:57, 2 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Q_Chris -- "A feather in X's cap" is kind of an idiom or fixed phrase. In number 2, the idiom is being treated basically as an unanalyzable chunk, while in number 1, the idiom is partially being broken apart and its component elements exposed to syntactic rules. In number 3, the idiom is completely broken apart, so that you're alluding to it, but not really directly using it. Since the feathers and caps are purely metaphorical, I'm not so sure that "there are obviously multiple caps and feathers being discussed". There are some conundrums of this general type for which there don't seem to be any easy answers, and which are more semantic than grammatical in nature -- see Donkey sentence, for example. AnonMoos (talk) 14:59, 2 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well put. Once you break the idiom, the absurdity can lead you into some weird places. What of it if there are multiple caps and multiple feathers per person? "John and Jim really got feathers in their caps this morning." "Ah, that's nothing; Jenny got 26 fish scales in her beret just last week..." Matt Deres (talk) 15:35, 2 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
To support the above two statements, see Idiom#Dealing with non-compositionality, "The non-compositionality of meaning of idioms challenges theories of syntax. The fixed words of many idioms do not qualify as constituents in any sense." That is, you really can't play around with the grammar of idioms in this way. --Jayron32 15:38, 2 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Moving away from caps and idioms, consider:

  1. Everyone in the group raised their hand.
  2. Everyone in the group raised their hands.
  3. Everyone in the group raised her hands.

To me, 1 means each person raised one hand, while 2 at least allows for the possibility that each person raised both hands. But 3 feels different to me: I think that in 3, each woman definitely raised both hands. --70.29.13.251 (talk) 02:19, 3 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Then there's "Everybody brushed their teeth" (i.e. each person brushed his or her own teeth" vs. "Everybody brushed his teeth" (which can suggest that each person brushed the teeth of some unnamed masculine individual). AnonMoos (talk) 04:17, 3 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I would read 3 to mean that several people were responsible for raising one woman's hands (for example, someone paralyzed or maybe in reference to a statue or something), but it would depend on emphasis. The use of "one" in "everyone", leads me to read 2 as being the raising of both hands (switching in "everybody" leaves it more ambiguous). Matt Deres (talk) 14:50, 3 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Fascinating. I have never before heard of any distinction in meaning between {someone, anyone, everyone, no one} and {somebody, anybody, everybody, nobody}. (In their normal senses, that is; idioms like "He's a somebody" are another matter.) --70.29.13.251 (talk) 22:54, 4 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have heard foreigners find the subtleties difficult, but I find it hard to credit that a native speaker would have a problem distinguishing "I don't like someone" from "I don't like anyone". μηδείς (talk) 02:34, 6 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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