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If I have an item, combined with another item, is it still a singular subject in the sentence? For example:

  • This paper, combined with some glue, makes for an afternoon of art projects.
  • This paper, combined with some glue, make for an afternoon of art projects.

All of my experience tells me that it should be the first, but I have multiple people arguing for the second.

RegDwigнt
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Josh
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2 Answers2

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This paper, combined with some glue, makes for an afternoon of art projects.

This is the correct version because you've necessarily put the the "combined with glue" between parenthetical commas. The agreement is then between the subject "this paper" and the verb "makes."

On the other hand you could also write "The paper and glue make for an afternoon of art projects." In this case there is no parenthetical clause and paper and glue combine to make a plural subject (they make).

waiwai933
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Naomi T.
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    But you could equally make up a spurious argument that it "should" be plural because, despite the commas, the intention is that both elements are combined...! – Neil Coffey Aug 20 '13 at 20:10
  • Welcome to English Language and Usage - Stack Exchange! You are more than welcome to link to your website in your user profile; however, I've removed it from your posts as general etiquette on Stack Exchange is to not leave signatures in posts. – waiwai933 Aug 21 '13 at 05:58
  • What @Neil is hinting at is actually not a theoretical exercise, or a "made-up spurious argument" even, but a rather common phenomenon that has a name, notional agreement or notional concord. (The textbook example probably being "a lot of people are X", where the verb is plural even though a lot quite clearly is singular.) So it'd be interesting to analyze how widespread it is with parentheticals such as the one in this question here. – RegDwigнt Aug 22 '13 at 10:01
  • @RegDwighт I actually hate terms like 'notional agreement'. There are different possible syntactic structures, each of which results in a particular verb agreement. It's difficult to see why either one is more or less 'notional' than the other (what does that even really mean in grammatical terms?) – Neil Coffey Aug 22 '13 at 16:02
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    @Neil a fair point to make, but frankly we won't find many terms in any field that make much sense upon closer inspection. Think of them as naming variables in programming, or placeholders in general, or in fact any word in any language for that matter. It doesn't really matter much if we call it "notional agreement" or "habrababra agreement" or "clueless catnip" or "Susan1978", as long as we know what that label refers to. – RegDwigнt Aug 22 '13 at 16:12
  • @RegDwighт I broadly agree with that, and if people accept that instead of 'formal agreement' and 'notional agreement' we could equally say 'bling agreement' and 'blong agreement', then fine. But, it seems to me that a term such as 'notional' could be taken (rightly or wrongly) as making a theoretical stance-- that the agreement is somehow "not syntactic" (when I think that's difficult to defend), or implying that it is somehow a "secondary citizen". I prefer to avoid risk of the kind of misunderstanding that leads the present answer to get 4 upvotes... – Neil Coffey Aug 23 '13 at 16:40
  • Or put another way: it's one thing having a term like "future tense" and then arguing about whether a particular instance really encodes 'tense' or 'mood', whether it really encodes 'futurity' or 'volition'-- the term is at least good enough to merit the debate in the first place. But there are other terms that are so unrepresentative that they really just have nothing going for them at all! – Neil Coffey Aug 23 '13 at 16:42
  • @Neil Coffey I prefer 'logical / notional agreement' (to, say, 'synesis'), because it spells out that an attempt is being made to make the grammar distinguish between possible readings (rather than accept that someone somewhere managed to get a blanket rule to be accepted by part of the population). Bacon and eggs are both quite expensive; bacon and eggs is on the menu. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 27 '14 at 15:07
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The sentence per se talks about what 'this paper' does:

This paper (…) makes for an afternoon of art projects.

In the context, how it does is secondary:

combined with some glue

which is why that part is parenthesized.

This paper, combined with some glue, makes for an afternoon of art projects.

This verb refers to 'the paper' alone and therefore is in the singular. Note the verb combined, also referring to 'the paper'.

There is no reason for a plural verb unless the intended meaning is different:

This paper, and some glue, make for an afternoon of art projects.

We are now talking about paper and glue together.

Kris
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