Mokulele Caravan lands on Maui Highway

Apophis said:
Actually, I'm fairly certain this is grammatically correct, even though it doesn't sound like it.

Re-phrase the sentence like this, "Not one of the ten people on board was injured" and you can see why.
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Really? I did a google search type thing to avoid looking like an idiot here and it said it was wrong... Then I did it again after you said that and I'm seeing answers both ways. :confused:
 
DubyaDawg said:
Really? I did a google search type thing to avoid looking like an idiot here and it said it was wrong... Then I did it again after you said that and I'm seeing answers both ways. :confused:
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My mom was an English teacher, so that's where I derive my answer....but I searched Google as well and found the same thing. There doesn't seem to be a consensus on the correct answer.
 
JayAre said:
You mean the two FOs who forgot to put the dip stick back in.

Any who great job on the pilot!
I believe a free drink for her/him is in order.
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It's been discussed that some pt-6s have a check valve if that happens. Not the case I take it?
 
99driver said:
Amflight blew 2 pt-6's during my stint there. Only 1 TIO-540.
Why do people continue to believe the myth that turbines don't fail? They do all the time.
Give me a twin!
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Correct, in my time Bush Flying I have been around mainly PT6s and 530s/540s, I have never seen or heard (from other pilot stories) of a 530/540 failure, plenty of PT6s problems on the Twin Otter. In fact in both of the locations I have been flying they never lost a piston (mostly 206s) due to engine failure, don't get me started on the turbines.
 
DubyaDawg said:
"None of the 10 people on board was injured . . ."

This is bothering me immensely.

All grammar aside, great job by the pilot!
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That particular sentence is probably one of the harder-to-parse sentences you could find in the English language. Thank you sooo much for bringing it to our attention.

It's ambiguous because: 1. the Noun “people” can be either plural or singular. b. the pronoun “none” can be either plural or singular. So, yeah, you picked the Double Secret Probation sentence. Again, thanks for sharing.

First, a spot of review for those such as myself who skipped, slept-through, or otherwise don’t remember 8th grade English.

Indefinite vs. Definite Pronoun.

A pronoun, of course, is a word that stands in for a noun and represents it. (In the last sentence “it” was the pronoun representing the noun “noun”.) Think of a pronoun as a local dealer standing in for the kingpin. Skinny or Badger standing in for Walt… Ok, that’s a bad example.

As your 8th grade English teacher taught you, an indefinite pronoun is a pronoun that doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Your English teacher probably didn’t know what he was talking about either… so let’s keep it simple. Largely, when it comes to pronouns, definite vs indefinite boils down to whether “The” or “A” comes right before the noun. In other words, does the pronoun refer to a specific noun or a general noun?

You may ask, “This doesn’t seem important. Why does this matter?”

Well, let’s consider your mother and the noun “Postman”. “A” postman is just some guy; so when your mom bangs “a” postman, she’s being a sl*t . When your mom bangs “the” postman, well, then she’s having an affair. Now do you see why it’s important?

I know, I know. Right now you are screaming at me… “But Duster, the pronoun in question is ‘none’, so what does this have to do with my Mom, and what kind of pronoun is ‘none’?”

Good question… Typically, your mom would bang “none” of the postmen, meaning not one out of the many, many, oh god…so many…postmen. So you see, “none” is indefinite because it does not specify the one specific postman your mom did not bang. If your mom would not bang “the” postman, it simply means the affair is over; the thrill is gone. She’s scared. He can’t commit. He’s just another D-bag and she’d rather keep her security. Got it? Easy, right?? Let’s move on.

Number of Noun and Pronoun

Now, let’s consider the “number” of the noun. God help you if your mom bangs numerous postmen. However, if she does, you will clearly understand the difference in noun “number”, which refers to the noun’s representation of one versus many. In the example above, the noun is the singular “postman”. “Postmen” would be plural. Because of the man vs. men difference, it is easy to see when this noun is singular and when it’s plural. The noun “people” is more problematic, but we’ll get to that.

The pronoun “none" is also problematic. It can stand in for “no one”, “not one”, “not any”, “no people”, “no things”. It’s clear we have a problem here since “one” is singular and “any” is plural.

“That's nice. But how do we determine which is correct?”

As I'm sure you'll recall from 8th grade English, choosing the correct number for the pronoun depends on understanding the correct number of the antecedent.

“Wow, Duster. That’s freaking profound… but WTF is an antecedent?”

The antecedent is the pronoun's grandaddy noun, shuffling about somewhere up in some ancient preceding sentence. In this case the reporter used the phrase “10 people” as the antecedent noun.

The usual way one is taught to grok a plural noun is in terms of whether you can count its individual members. "There was a lot of wheat." vs. "There were one million pounds of wheat." You can’t count “a lot”, but you can count “one million pounds”. In fact, that’s the only way you’d know it actually was one million pounds. So “wheat” is easy.

The problem, as mentioned earlier, is that “people” can be used as a collective plural or a collective singular. “People” is used both ways. So it’s ambiguous. Think of the noun “people” and the noun “team”. These are both plural and collective singular nouns.
You’ll hear this breaking both ways all the time, especially if you observe international (read British) English.
- “None of the team were fined for throwing the game.”
- “None of the team was fined for hiring prostitutes.”

“People” sure seems plural. As in what you are thinking right now, “Duster, you are boring people.”

I think this boils down to what the reporter was trying to say. I think the reporter was trying to say that “not any” (“not one of the 10”) was injured.

But, in the sentence quoted, either way would probably be correct.
Consider the following variants of the pronoun “none” and the noun “people”:
No one person of the 10 people was injured.
No several people of the 10 people were injured.
No persons of the 10 people were injured.
No person of the 10 people was injured.

Personally, I’d give any of those a pass.

So, "none" and "people" can be either plural or singular depending on whether the reporter is smoking crack and feeling magnanimous, or smoking meth and feeling paranoid.

The past singular “was” has gotta mean meth.

At the end of the day, the pilot did a good job keeping it a “To Be” and preventing a “Not To Be”, so I’m not gonna get to strung out over the grammar.
 
We had a Mr. Fire Bottle at Mesa on the Dash-8. Supposedly during IOE while doing the acceptance check he fired one of the bottle in the right engine right as the IOE captain was walking around. The IOE check airman said he could hear a fairly loud 'Hssshhh' and was like 'Oh no...'
 
Crop Duster said:
That particular sentence is probably one of the harder-to-parse sentences you could find in the English language. Thank you sooo much for bringing it to our attention.

It's ambiguous because: 1. the Noun “people” can be either plural or singular. b. the pronoun “none” can be either plural or singular. So, yeah, you picked the Double Secret Probation sentence. Again, thanks for sharing.
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Okay, thanks for pointing that out. I did actually read all of that. I only started paying more attention to grammar because I had to take a placement test recently to a college class which forced me to go over a lot of the grammar stuff that I'd forgotten since said 8th grade English class, which I admittedly rarely paid attention in. When I read the sentence, I clearly read it to interpret it as the plural form of "people" rather than the "one of..." meaning you kindly pointed out. I also stated, after Apophis pointed it out, that I may very well have been wrong in my initial criticism of the author's grammatical structure. I don't know if you intended for your post to come off as sarcastically/angry at me as I read it, but I wasn't trying at all to diminish the pilot's excellent performance in this situation, hence my making note of it in my initial post. I'm 'soooo' sorry I offended you with my improper grammatical criticism. (Again, if you weren't meaning to be sarcastic I apologize, it just came off that way).
 
DubyaDawg said:
Okay, thanks for pointing that out. I did actually read all of that. I only started paying more attention to grammar because I had to take a placement test recently to a college class which forced me to go over a lot of the grammar stuff that I'd forgotten since said 8th grade English class, which I admittedly rarely paid attention in. When I read the sentence, I clearly read it to interpret it as the plural form of "people" rather than the "one of..." meaning you kindly pointed out. I also stated, after Apophis pointed it out, that I may very well have been wrong in my initial criticism of the author's grammatical structure. I don't know if you intended for your post to come off as sarcastically/angry at me as I read it, but I wasn't trying at all to diminish the pilot's excellent performance in this situation, hence my making note of it in my initial post. I'm 'soooo' sorry I offended you with my improper grammatical criticism. (Again, if you weren't meaning to be sarcastic I apologize, it just came off that way).
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:) :) I'm truly sorry for that. I just reread my post and I see what you mean. Mea culpa. No ad hominem was intended whatsoever; Not aimed at you in any way. Sorry that it came off that way. Please accept my apology.
In the hope that it comes off as humorous, I'm wont to offer up a heaping helping of snide from time to time, and this one one of those times. That said, it was "indefinite" snide; Not aimed at you at all. You were good to point out the ambiguity of the language and question it. And I hope you saw that you were not incorrect in you analysis.
I have this thing about language. I throw up in my mouth a little almost every time I read what passes for educated writing these days. It's especially irksome to see poor language purveyed by the "priestly" classes, who ought to know better and have a responsibility to write well in order to provide an exemplar for the rest of us... So please know that any vitriol is aimed at those folks and not you...
 
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