This is what I've just read: England is old and small and they started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."
I've been encountering this more and more. I've found this construction out out of (number) + plural verb even in EFL books. I understand that the proximity of 25 coffins, plural, causes the speaker/writer to make the verb agree with the nearest noun, but that's not its subject, the word one is, one coffin was found to have scratch marks...
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Sobre o solalgumacoisa...
Solstasgia, Solagia, helialgia..pra mim é tudo "grego", acho que nenhum vai muito bem. E não faço idéia do sentido de sunsickness.
Que tal uma totalmente latina? Sol + dolentia ... sol + ignorância (usando a idéia do Kundera em seu romance "A ignorância") ... enfim...
Até.:
Ops...
e sobre o "one + plural verbs" ... o que é EFL ? talvez essa construção seja legitimada pelos catedráticos de Oxford algum dia ^^
Talvez tenha começado com algum não nativo, em cuja língua isso seria possível ... sei lá...
It's not "25 coffins" that triggers the plural. There turned out to be more than one coffin with scratch marks, right? So, it's more natural to have a plural subject.
In that light, "one in 25 coffins" can be understood as not the subject but an adverbial clause denoting ratio.
There turned out to be more than one coffin with scratch marks, right?
No, it's one coffin out of 25. The subject is still singular.
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