Pronoun
Mobstr is a living example that not everyone who write on walls are vandals.
I found the above line in a daily news.Here the pronoun " everyone" is considered plural.But is it right to use?
Top answer
It looks like an error to me. The determinative every has a distributive meaning and hence selects the singular head one in the compound form everyone . Singular interpretation follows through to the predicate, so the verb-form must also be singular, cf.
- It looks like an error to me.
- The determinative every has a distributive meaning and hence selects the singular head one in the compound form everyone .
- Singular interpretation follows through to the predicate, so the verb-form must also be singular, cf.
- Everyone is here , not * Everyone are here .
- The same applies to the other compound determinatives: everybody, anybody, someone, everything, nothing , etc: Everybody is coming , not * Everybody are coming.
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It looks like an error to me.
The determinative every has a distributive meaning and hence selects the singular head one in the compound form everyone. Singular interpretation follows through to the predicate, so the verb-form must also be singular, cf. Everyone is here, not *Everyone are here.
The same applies to the other compound
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