Grammar in "Through Him, with Him, in Him"?

[PacoG]

“You” can be singular or plural.

And there seems to be this inner longing by English speakers to make up for the lack of a plural you (aka the vosotros or ustedes form in Spanish). There are all kinds of you regional attempts to make up for this lack of a plural “you” in English. We Texans use “you all” and Chicagoans use “yous.” There is a need in English to add a word to “you” when the plural “you” is invoked…you kids, you people, etc. etc.

Someone should come up with a plural you. Our language is sorely lacking one. And everyone who speaks it, knows it. Most English speakers in the United States have ancestry in another language that had a separate plural second person.

 

[fieldsparrow]

Robert Aston argues that rules are different for abstract, non-quantifiable nouns, so let’s use a compound phrase that fits that description.
“All my hope and fear has melted away”? No.
“All my hope and fear have melted away.”
The compound subject makes it plural. If you’re not convinced, let’s expand our compound subject:
“All my hope and fear and itchiness and skill and derring-do and citizenship and contempt and intelligence has melted away.”
It’s obviously more appropriate to use the plural “have”.
It also doesn’t really matter whether the “all” is present or not.

And I disagree here.

“(All (my (hope and fear))) has melted away” - yes, if you are referring to your “hope and fear” as a single thing. “It has melted away.”

*"(All (my (hope and fear))) have melted away" - no - *“It have melted away.” (This sounds to my ear like “All your base are belong to us.” )

“(All (my ((hopes) and (fears)))) have melted away” - yes - “They have melted away.”

The “all” is a quantifier and a determiner. Quantifiers can behave somewhat oddly (hence the confusion) and it’s been too many years since I wrote up an explanation in terms of generative grammar… and I can’t draw the trees on here. It’s probably beyond the scope of the discussion anyway But if you are interested, Carnie’s Syntax is a reasonably good introduction to generative grammar and has a section on quantifiers.

 

[Robert_Aston]

What a fascinating range of views and interpretations.

So, any comments now about my earlier posting on a different grammatical error?

I wrote earlier:

• …the incorrect English that has come into many editions of the Litany of Loretto in the Holy Rosary in which “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi…” is given as “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.”

This is a vocative address to the Lamb and should be followed by a second person singular verb (“who take”), not third person (“who takes”). The incorrect “who takes” has probably crept in because we are so used to hearing the phrase in Holy Mass “This is the Lamb of God, who takes away…” in which instance, the third person “takes” is of course correct.

One can argue that the Latin “qui” can be translated as “you”, rather than as the relative “who”, (as it is in the Agnus Dei of the Mass itself - “Lamb of God, you take away…”), and this correctly uses the second person.

In earlier translations there existed the form “Lamb of God, that (or who) takest away…”. Takest is, of course, second person singular.

So, out with your Rosary guides and prayer books giving “Lamb of God, who takes away…” ! Or write to the publishers. *

Views?

 

[Digitonomy]

…the incorrect English that has come into many editions of the Litany of Loretto in the Holy Rosary in which “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi…” is given as “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.”

This is a vocative address to the Lamb and should be followed by a second person singular verb (“who take”), not third person (“who takes”).

Agreed.