Half the team is sick or are sick? A significant number of voters is undecided or are undecided? None of actors has arrived or have arrived yet? The words half, number, and none, along with a few others, are notorious for raising doubts whether their verbs should be singular or plural. And since we can’t allow ourselves to consult our ear to decide matters of grammar, we’re left to look more closely at how these words work differently in different contexts. That thinking will give us a reliable way to decide how they are to be used correctly.
The word half in the phrase half the team is a noun, and we should note that it is a singular noun (its plural is halves) meaning one of two equal parts of something. The three words half the team make up the subject phrase for the verb, and so it seems an easy move to conclude that the singular verb is must be the correct form to use—according to the standard rule that a verb agrees in number with its subject. The correct form of this sentence is, in fact, half the team is sick, but not because the singular noun half must govern a singular verb. Instead, the word half (and, as we’ll see, number, and none sometimes as well) requires a singular verb if the whole of which it is an equal part is singular (like the noun team), but a plural verb if the whole is plural, as, for example, in the sentence half the students are sick. Why? Because we conceive of half of one thing (like team) as one entity in itself, but we think of half of something that is multiple (like students) as many entities, making a plural verb necessary.
This is an instance of logic hedging out grammar, and as vexing as we might find that, we should probably be glad that the language has been careful enough to replicate our conceptions so closely in formulating some of its rules of construction. Another noun that follows the same line of thinking is number. In our second example, a significant number of voters is undecided, the singular noun number should follow the same calculation that governs the noun half: if what we’re referring to is plural (here, voters), then the noun number requires a plural verb. Our example, then, should be revised to read, a significant number of voters are undecided. If, however, we wish to say something about the number of voters who remain undecided, the addition of the definite article the signals that our attention is in fact on a specific number, to which we could theoretically assign a numeral; in this case, then, the verb is singular: the number of voters who remain undecided is unprecedented at this point in an election.
And finally, the indefinite pronoun none. Once again, the conception we have in mind determines the rules of construction. When the pronoun none means not one, its verb is, accordingly, singular: none of the actors has arrived yet. If, however, we employ the same pronoun none to mean no, or all not, then the verb is plural: none of the actors have arrived yet. Some other indefinite pronouns, for example no one and each, are exclusively singular, and so always govern a singular verb: no one, not even the director and producer, was concerned. Each is waiting patiently. (Each, however, may sometimes be seen with a plural verb when it is an adverb, not the subject of a clause: the directors each are ready to wait until all the actors have arrived. Here the verb is plural because the subject, directors, is plural.)
It’s all a matter of conception: how do you see what you want to say something about? That is the idea behind the words we have looked at here, but it is also sometimes the idea behind what are called compound subjects. We certainly say correctly, the fork and knife are on the table, two subjects as two distinct entities, and so the verb is plural. But we may also say correctly, peanut butter and jelly on white break was once a popular meal for lunch, where the two distinct realities of peanut butter and jelly are conceived of, in the context, as constituting one subject. Looking closely, very closely, at what we’re thinking is the key.
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