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However, Bryson DeChambeau seized the lead by the end of Friday's second round and was a mere one stroke ahead of Reed and Erik van Rooyen. (From Bleacher Report)

It seems that a here is not a normal indefinite article because it doesn't seem to determine the head noun stroke. Note that a mere here means merely.

The question is how to parse a mere one stroke:

(1) [a mere] [one stroke]

(2) [[a mere] one] stroke

(3) a [mere [one stroke]]

(4) a [[mere one] stroke]

(5) [a [mere one]] stroke

Here's a similar example having the same construction:

He played a mere one game in Miami, logging 12 special-teams snaps. (Yahoo Sports)

JK2
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  • If you think it sounds clumsy, I agree. '... a mere two strokes ...' is fine, or '... merely a single stroke ...'. // I'll go with 'a mere two strokes', which has the same structure but sounds (to my ears) more natural. 'Mere' is a strange beast, classified traditionally as an adjective, but recognised as a peripheral member of the class. 'He was a mere youth' means 'He was a member of the class 'youths', those immature, often unwise, largely unempowered, relatively unwealthy ...' ...You get the picture. 'Mere' attaches to 'youths' rather than 'he'. So if I had to analyse the idiom, ... – Edwin Ashworth Feb 23 '20 at 14:30
  • I'd have to pull 'mere' out from 'a mere two strokes', comparing with '[merely] [a couple of strokes]'. Sentence adjective (!) + quasi-partitive/numeral substitute + noun? You can see why I just consider 'merely a couple of strokes', 'merely three inches' ... (or 'a mere couple of strokes', 'a mere three inches' ...) an idiom. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 23 '20 at 14:36
  • @EdwinAshworth I don't think 'a mere one stroke' is clumsy. Nope. And I don't think 'a mere two strokes' is an idiom. In any case, it's not about 'a mere two strokes' or about 'mere' itself. In fact, you can replace 'mere' with 'meager' and get 'a meager one stroke', which I think has the same syntax. – JK2 Feb 23 '20 at 14:46
  • "a mere two strokes" outperforms "a mere one stroke" in a Google search 35:1. And the second example is merer. // Whatever; 'mere', 'meagre', 'paltry' ... refer to the measure (two strokes etc) not the noun per se (stroke/s) but need context to be used ('a mere gingko'??? 'a mere planetoid'??? (not if it hits the Earth). 'Leading by a mere 17 runs' (cricket) but not 'leading by a mere 17 goals'. So 'mere' may 'attach' to say '2 runs' (and then the idiom is led by 'a mere 2 runs', with the article), but 'mere' refers to a context also. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 23 '20 at 15:12
  • Note that the indefinite article can be used with adjectives like "amazing" or "great" + a numeral + a plural noun, discussed in this question: Indefinite articles used with plural nouns: It was AN amazing TWO DAYS – herisson Feb 25 '20 at 04:09
  • @herisson But 'stroke' or 'game' in the OP is not a plural noun. – JK2 Feb 25 '20 at 04:19
  • If a mere means merely, then a mere is an adverbial. [a mere] [one stoke]; [only] [one stroke] – Tinfoil Hat Feb 29 '20 at 01:22
  • @TinfoilHat If a mere is an adverbial, how could an adverbial such as a mere or only modify the nominal one stroke? – JK2 Feb 29 '20 at 02:08
  • Are you concerned about adverbs modifying nouns? That's a whole big thing. It's also not a problem. If you can get past that, the rest is easy. – Tinfoil Hat Feb 29 '20 at 02:32
  • @TinfoilHat I'm not "concerned" about that. I'm open to adverbs modifying nouns and NPs. It's just that I don't think this is one of those cases. In fact, I remember reading the paper like a year ago. If memory serves, that paper doesn't say anything about adverbs like merely in merely one stroke modifying the nominal one stroke. What merely modifies is one. Hence the ungrammatical a merely stroke and merely strokes. – JK2 Feb 29 '20 at 02:46

3 Answers3

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Updated to reflect discussion in comments . . .

I would not assume that a mere means the same thing as merely just because you can swap one in for the other here. But when a mere appears before a noun modified by a cardinal number, you can remove it. So I would parse a mere one stroke like this:

[a mere] [one stroke]

What you want to call these things is between you and your grammarian. Meanwhile, let's look at some examples:

He was a mere one stroke ahead.
He was one stroke ahead.
He was a mere five strokes ahead.
He was five strokes ahead.

Again, it's the cardinal numbers that are key here:

He was a mere child.
*He was child. (incorrect)
The candy was a mere penny.
*The candy was penny. (incorrect)
The candy was a mere one cent.
The candy was one cent.
The candy was a mere ten cents.
The candy was ten cents.

Linguists Adele E. Goldberg and Laura A. Michaelis offer this explanation:

There exists one systematic exception to the restriction barring the indefinite article from combining with a cardinal number. The indefinite article can precede 1-ONE and other cardinal numbers when the cardinal is preceded by an adjectival modifier:

Butterfat content for sherbet might be a mere one percent or less. (*a one percent)
a scant one week after he died (*a one week)
There will be a lucky one contestant randomly brought back in a pre‐match. (*a one contestant)
TV star Kirstie Alley lost a whopping 30 pounds. (*a 30 pounds)
The site has grown to a staggering 60 million members. (*a 60 million members)

We postulate that the indefinite determiner is required in this context because the cardinal number is no longer serving as a determiner, but rather as a modifier.
Source: One Among Many: Anaphoric One and Its Relationship With Numeral One

In simplistic terms: If you put an adjectival modifier in front of your cardinal, your cardinal changes from a determiner to a modifier, and you still need a determiner. Put another way, the indefinite article + adjective is a package deal: [a mere]. No adjective, no article:

*He was a five strokes ahead. (incorrect)

Researcher Stephanie Solt further examines the modified cardinal construction and notes, among other things, that there are . . .

. . . two types of the modified cardinal construction, showing that both involve coercion of the modified element to the semantic type of a singular noun, an analysis that suggests an explanation for the obligatory occurrence of the indefinite article a.
Source: Two Types of Modified Cardinals

Here are some examples:

Type 1—adjective modifies noun phrase (quality):
It was a long five miles.

Type 2—adjective modifies cardinal number (quantity):
It was a mere five strokes.

In both cases though, you can remove the indefinite article and the adjective, and if you remove one, you must remove the other. I'll let the linguists continue to postulate beyond that.

Tinfoil Hat
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    +1 for the paper citations. I'll definitely be taking a look at them when I get the time. – JK2 Mar 01 '20 at 02:29
  • Granted, a mere can be replaced with merely or only, but I think not all 'a/an + adjective' constructions can be replaced with adverbs, can they? What adverbs can substitute for a scant, a lucky, a whopping, a staggering, etc. in the examples shown in your answer? – JK2 Mar 01 '20 at 04:41
  • Hm. Syntactically, they can all be swapped for certain adverbs. But, true, they can't all be swapped while retaining the meaning. The meaningful swap seems to be coincidental to certain adjectives that have corresponding degree adverbs (or synonyms): a scant one week --> barely/hardly one week. an approximate 30 pounds --> approximately/about 30 pounds. a near 60 million members --> nearly/almost 60 million members. – Tinfoil Hat Mar 01 '20 at 16:29
  • As per the second paper, Type 1 is not possible for the adverb swapping at all. Type 2 is only partially possible. So maybe you should edit the last sentence of your answer. – JK2 Mar 01 '20 at 21:28
  • I am wondering if I should take out the adverb swapping examples altogether. Now that I think about it, saying a mere means merely is a bit of red herring; their syntactic swapability does not prove they are semantically equivalent. – Tinfoil Hat Mar 01 '20 at 23:16
  • More importantly, the syntactic swapability argument hinges on the apparently false semantic equivalence claim. Without the former even the parsing [a mere] [one stroke] itself is questionable. – JK2 Mar 02 '20 at 01:34
  • On page 243 of Goldberg are such examples as "However, after seeing the ample size of the taco, a mere one was sufficient." These examples might suggest that we parse the NP as (5). What do you think? – JK2 Mar 03 '20 at 03:04
  • That's a fused-head type of one? Reading CGEL now on cardinal numbers and when they go from determiners to modifiers. – Tinfoil Hat Mar 03 '20 at 05:19
  • CGEL doesn't touch on the particular construction at issue here, but you'll have to first determine how to parse the construction and only then can you identify the correct fused head. If you choose (5), for example, the fused head is not 'one' but 'a mere one'. – JK2 Mar 03 '20 at 05:33
  • I don't think (5) is relevant here, unless we want to get into a whole different discussion about how bare cardinals are functioning. We don't have a bare cardinal; head noun stroke follows cardinal one. What we know: the presence of indefinite article a is licensed by the intervening adjective (e.g. mere). No adjective, no article. So we can at least parse this as a package deal: [a mere]. – Tinfoil Hat Mar 03 '20 at 18:39
  • @JK2: I've update the answer -- not sure how far it gets us. – Tinfoil Hat Mar 04 '20 at 00:38
  • If the intervening adjective licensed the indefinite article, you would have an independent unit comprising only the two. But you don't. You can't remove the cardinal number 'one': "However, after seeing the ample size of the taco, a mere was sufficient" is ungrammatical; "...was a mere stroke ahead of Reed and Erik van Rooyen" has a different meaning altogether. So I'd say it's not the adjective itself but the 'adjective + cardinal number' combo that licenses the indefinite article. Hence (5). – JK2 Mar 04 '20 at 00:43
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Note that "a mere two strokes" would be equally valid (to most people), so "a" is not directly connected to "one stroke". Best guess is that "a" modifies "mere", and pretty much stops there. (Note that one could equally validly use "a paltry" or some similar construction.)

And "a mere" is clearly modifying "one stroke", vs "one", since "one stroke" could be replaced by simply "stroke" (or, in another venue, "goal" or even "fish")

This is a mushy area of English syntax, tied up in idiom. Extending my guess, idiomatic usages such as this treat "mere" as a sort of agglomerator, somehow carrying a prepositional effect similar to "pair of".

Consider "An astounding 800 people are in line to hear the governor speak." One wouldn't say "... is in line ...", nor would one say "A 800 people are in line ..." In this example "astounding" is short for "astounding crowd of", or some such, even though there's no hint of "simple" word elision.

Hot Licks
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  • You seem to be going for syntax (1). I'm sure your first paragraph is fine. But I'm not so sure about your second. True, replacing "one stroke" with "stroke" doesn't affect the grammaticality of the phrase, but it does affect the meaning, doesn't it? So I'm not sure the one with only "stroke" has the same syntax. Also, if "a mere two strokes" has the same syntax as "a mere one stroke" as suggested in your first paragraph, then "two strokes" should also be able to be replaced by simply "strokes", but it can't. (*...was a mere strokes ahead of Reed and Erik van Rooyen.) – JK2 Feb 23 '20 at 21:29
  • I think my first comment is still valid even after you add the third and fourth paragraphs. – JK2 Feb 23 '20 at 22:14
  • Re the ellipsis (not 'elision') analysis, what's the ellipted phrase in "a mere __________ one stroke" corresponding to "pair of" or "crowd of"? – JK2 Feb 24 '20 at 00:01
  • @JK2 - "margin of" – Hot Licks Feb 24 '20 at 02:14
  • But a mere margin of two strokes is treated as singular, whereas a mere two strokes as plural. If the latter is formed from ellipsis of margin of, why are they treated differently in number? – JK2 Feb 24 '20 at 05:29
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    @JK2 No, 'A mere two strokes is not a decisive lead' (a singular length) not 'A mere two strokes are not a decisive lead'. In line with '3 dollars is a trifling amount for a ticket'. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 24 '20 at 15:46
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    @EdwinAshworth That's a little misleading. Your singular treatment has nothing to do with the 'a mere' construction. You'd still prefer 'Two strokes is not a decisive lead' over 'Two strokes are not a decisive lead'. Since 'stroke' is tricky, let's make it 'player'. You can say 'A mere two players have scored all the goals in the last five games' but not 'A mere two players has scored all the goals in the last five games'. Note that the syntax of 'a mere two players' is the same as that of 'a mere two strokes' and of 'a mere one stroke'. – JK2 Feb 25 '20 at 00:39
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Bryson DeChambeau […] was a mere one stroke ahead of Reed

As is pointed out above, this is essentially no different from a paltry/slim/threatening, etc., one or two strokes ahead of Reed in which mere is an adjective.

"One or two strokes" is an interesting noun phrase (number + noun). Compare:

“The total was a mere five goals/gallons/miles/dollars/metres, etc short of what was required.” or "Five gallons was enough to fill the tank."

I assume the context of the question is golf, and in golf, a stroke is a unit of measurement and thus, when combined with a number, is treated as a singular amount comprised of that number and unit of measurement.

Thus Bryson DeChambeau […] was a mere [one stroke] ahead of Reed.

("ahead of Read" is adjectival.)

Greybeard
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