Strand 1/Grammar: Lesson 18 – PPs and Subject-Verb Agreement (and a rant about Springboard)

A typical method for teaching about language is to integrate in to writing instruction, often in mini-lessons, or, in textbooks, in “Grammar and Usage” sidebars, such as this one in

from The College Board’s Springboard: English Textual Power (Level 2, p. 97), for grade 7. Too often, these approaches attempt shortcuts to real explanations about language, leading students to miss the intended lesson and doubt their intuitions; consequently, students, regardless of writing ability, do not gain command of grammar as a rhetorical tool, nor do they have any confidence in their ability to analyze language.

Let’s look at this “Grammar and Usage” box a bit more closely. Here's the whole text from the photo, which occurs alongside a text about persuasive writing.

“A preposition links the noun or pronoun following it (its object) to another word in a sentence. Prepositional phrases add specific or necessary detail in sentences. They function as adjectives or adverbs.

Adverb phrase modifying the verb has swerved:
“…Skateboarding has swerved from the fringe.”

Adjective phrase modifying the noun cost:
“…the cost of doing business.”

You can use prepositional phrases to add specific details when you write. Take care to use correct subject-verb agreement. When a prepositional phrase separates the subject and verb, the verb agrees with the subject, not with the object of the prepositional phrase.

(Springboard: English Textual Power, Level 2, p. 97)

It is at the end of this sidebar that a connection to a typical "error" of writing, subject-verb agreement, is made. However, no examples are given, and it would be very difficult for students (or teachers) to glean how prepositional phrases are related to subject-verb agreement, or even to understand what is meant by that phrase or others such as “object of the prepositional phrase.”

I offer what I think the intended lesson is here. Subject-verb agreement is often listed as one of the most common errors of writing; it shows up on lists from elementary to college-level writing. Most writers, however, do not have issues at all with subject verb agreement in general. Our unconscious intuitions serve us quite well in guiding this agreement. (English language learners may have specific issues with subject-verb agreement, and these learners deserved a distinct, targeted lesson. Also, some English dialects have different patterns of subject-verb agreement that might deserve a separate lesson. Such variations should not be called “errors” since they are patterned and logical for each dialect, but they may differ from the so-called academic writing expected in most classroom writing.) However, one place in which there is variation with respect to subject-verb agreement involves subjects which contain prepositional phrases, as in the following examples:

Each one of the birds are/is going to leave the nest soon.
Neither of my two suitcases is/are adequate for this trip.
Bellingham is one of those cities which is/are working hard to reclaim a waterfront.

The typical usage suggestion is to make the verb agree with the subject noun preceding the prepositional phrase. However, when there is a mismatch in the “number” – singular each compared to plural birds, for example, as in the first example above – then speakers and writers choose either a verb to match the noun preceding the prepositional phrase or the noun within the prepositional phrase. And the facts are, of course, more complicated. The type of noun preceding the prepositional phrase can affect the form of the verb. Consider these examples with a term of measurement, like gallon or quart.

Three gallons of milk is enough.

Here singular is seems better even though gallons is plural. In contrast, plural are is preferred in the following example:

Three cats with long fur are enough.

Or consider nouns that have two meanings, as either a mass or a count noun, like chicken.

All of the chicken is gone.
All of the chickens are gone.

The all, the noun preceding the prepositional phrase in both examples, is irrelevant in determining the agreement; instead, we do and should use the noun in the prepositional phrase to determine the appropriate agreement, just as we are advised not to by the general usage rule. Whether or not you decide to deal with the additional data that make this particular usage rule a bit more complicated (but really interesting!), it certainly illustrates that patterns of language can be complex and sometimes murky. And that we should take more time to discuss grammatical terminology (prepositional phrases), grammatical functions (subjects), and the reasons behind the variations. After that, students can make informed choices about, for example, subject-verb agreement in writing. However, I challenge any student to understand these lessons or adjust their own verb choices in writing from an oversimplified sidebar such as the one discussed here.

A second issue I have with this particular “grammar and usage” sidebar is the conflation of adjective phrase, adverb phrase, and prepositional phrase. There has long been a tendency to conflate “form” and “function”, or syntax and meaning, in pedagogical grammatical explanations. To do so, however, ignores the actual patterns of language. Such conflation of terms is not only not useful, but it leads students to doubt their intuitions about word categories, and it provides no tools of analysis to extend to other examples. Consider the italicized words below.

“A preposition links the noun or pronoun following it (its object) to another word in a sentence. Prepositional phrases add specific or necessary detail in sentences. They function as adjectives or adverbs”

And it offers the following example, where the italicized prepositional phrase is called an adverb phrase.

Adverb phrase modifying the verb has swerved:
“…Skateboarding has swerved from the fringe.”

And the next, where the italicized prepositional phrase is called an adjective phrase.

Adjective phrase modifying the noun cost:
“…the cost of doing business.”

Why this conflation of terms? Why call prepositional phrases adjectives and adverbs? I believe the point is to illustrate that prepositional phrases can modify verbs (like adverbs can) and nouns (as do adjectives). This is true, and discussion of modification is important and useful. It's also true that there is overlap in how the various parts of speech function, as modifiers and complements of other categories. However, the category distinctions are real distinctions – categories that we all have in our heads that function uniquely in terms of their morphology and their syntax. Terms like noun, adjective, preposition, or adverb are not labels arbitrarily imposed on a language, but are real (and complex) categories. Understanding this is another useful lesson for students, and using the terminology that matches their intuitive categorization will allow them to make use of labels in a productive way, extending the conversations beyond simply labeling to how to manipulate phrases in their writing. We can offer students straightforward tools of analysis that allow them to discover these category distinctions and see how they employ such tools unconsciously all the time. We all have unconscious knowledge about categories. By using accurate labels, we are simply connecting that unconscious knowledge to terminology to help make it conscious knowledge which we can then apply in all sorts of ways – to our writing, to our analysis of literature, to investigation of other linguistic patterns, and so on. Sidebars or mini-lessons such as the ones described here are attempts to cut to the chase, to deal with common writing errors in a fast and efficient manner. However, the assumed background knowledge, the misleading terminology, and the lack of discussion of reasons behind the variations ("errors") render such lessons essentially useless.

Hmm, I titled this "lesson" but I'm not sure that it is, except maybe it's a lesson to avoid using Springboard, which many of the teachers I know don't like anyway. And it does provide another justification for studying prepositions and prepositional phrases if you want to wrestle with subject-verb agreement as it arises in your students' writing. Of course, intervening prepositional phrases are just one of the reasons that agreement with the verb varies. Browse through this or this or this one from my alma mater to find some others - but I wouldn't suggest marching through all of the reasons that subject-verb agreement "problems" arise.