One Of The Plural Or Singular?

Hi Kprasadreddy, and welcome to the English Forums.

Yes, use the plural noun and plural verb.

This is one of [the cars that run on hydrogen].

But your first sentence isn't very natural. Usually we use "people" instead of "persons" -- but I can't make that sound natural.

Hi,

But shouldn't "one of the " be singular?

Here we are only talking about one in a group

Let us say

One of the guys runs to work everyday

or

one of the guys run to work everyday

Thx,

P

I am still confused

"One of the guys runs to work every day" is grouped as "[One of the guys] runs to work every day". "One of the guys" is singular, and "runs" agrees with the singular subject.

"This is one of the cars that run on hydrogen" is grouped as "This is one of [the cars that run on hydrogen]". In other words, of all the cars that run on hydrogen, this is one example. "Run" now agrees with a plural subject, "cars".

"This is one of the cars that runs on hydrogen" would logically have to be interpreted as "This is [one of the cars] that runs on hydrogen". Although this seems not unreasonable, if you meant this you'd say it differently; something like "This is one of the cars. This one runs on hydrogen". Here, the set of cars that "the cars" refers to has to be apparent from context (and may include both hydrogen-fuelled and non-hydrogen-fuelled vehicles).

Having said that, in everyday conversation a native speaker might well say "This is one of the cars that runs on hydrogen", although logically they mean "This is one of the cars that run on hydrogen", and it would often go unnoticed. In fact, if you asked a cross-section of ordinary native speakers, my guess is that many of them wouldn't know whether it should be "run" or "runs", and wouldn't perceive any difference in meaning.

Thanks Mr. Wordy. Nicely explained.

--Ayush

well done. awesome explanation.

thank you so much for this! a ball of realisation just hit me hard ahahha