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Teo Posted 20 years ago
Grammar

more than one (agreement)

01. There is more than one first prize winner.02br
02br
002. There are more than one first prize winner.02br
02br
003. More than one student is American.02br
02br
004. More than one student are American.02br
02br
00Which do you think is correct?0-
  

Top answer

0 "More" in "more than one X" is an uncountable noun. 02br 02br 00paco 0-

— Paco2004

  • 0 "More" in "more than one X" is an uncountable noun.
  • 02br 02br 00paco 0-
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11 Answers
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0 "More" in "more than one X" is an uncountable noun. So I always use "is".02br
02br
00paco 0-
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0Teo, this is a great question, but it's giving me a headache! I'm a native speaker. I would definitely say 1 and 3, not 2 and 4, but I can't explain why! Obviously, "more than one" is inherently plural, but the versions with "are" sound completely wrong to me. I'd be interested to hear more attempts to explain why.0-
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0Hello Khoff02br
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00"I have more than one apple" might be parsed in two ways.02br
02br
00 [1] I have ((AP: more than one) NP: apple).02br
00 [2] I have (NP: more (AP: than one apple)).02br
00Here ; AP=adjective phease, NP=noun phrase 02br
02br
00Which one do you think is right? If you use [url=0500
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0Hi Paco -I'll have to give your question some thought. The last time I parsed a sentence (we called it diagramming) was over 30 years ago - they stopped teaching it by the time my kids were in school. I do have a couple of thoughts to add to the confusion, however. It occurred to me last night that although I would say "more than one student01i00 02i01b00is02
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0Hello Khoff02br
02br
00I take it the first question you raised is related to the issue of subject-verb concord (or agreement). The subject-verb concord in English is really tough to acquire for me, a Japanese, whose mother tongue has no distinction in verbal forms for singular and plural subjects. My grammar books say as below about the concord:02br
02br
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0 01blockquote
01cite10Khoff12cite10Also, my daughter mentioned that her physics teacher was 11font10discussion 12font10whether fractions and decimals should be singular or plural -- would you say "0.1 litre 11b10is 12b10or 11b10are"? 12b10Would it be any differ
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Hmm. Tricky. My 2 cents worth:

I think it is only accurate to say "0.1 of a litre" and "0.2 of a litre". The plural "litres" should only be used when there is more than one litre. (or are more than one..he he - not)

The urge to say "0.2 litres" is totally understandable and because of the 2, probably won't get noticed often as being inaccurate. But I am pretty sure it's not gramm
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Acc to Swan (Practical English Usage, 504.3) more than one is generally used with the singular.
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