<p>Jason (is) the only one of the three people I (knew well) in middle school who still (write) to (me regularly). (No error)</p>
<p>The answer is "(write)."
At first, solving the problem, my writer's instinct told me that it should be "writes," but somehow, when I reviewed the question, it seemed wrong to say "writes" because of the phrase "... of the three people ... who."</p>
<p>Okay, my BIG question is, when we say, for e.g., "I will catch one of the five girls who bullies/bully in class," what is the antecedent of "who"? It seems like "one" girl, since I got the above question wrong.. </p>
<p>Answer to the second question is ‘bullies’. Very similar to your first question too. Yeah, who refers to ‘one’ of those girls, not all of them. It doesn’t sound right to the ear, yes, but that’s the grammatically correct sentence.</p>
<p>I will catch one of the five girls who bullies/bully(me) in class.</p>
<p>‘‘who bullies/bully(me) in class’’ is an adjectival restrictive clause that modifies girls(which girls??). Who is the subject of that clause, and who’s antecedent is ‘‘girls’’.Thus, who acts as a plural noun.</p>
<p>@realityisadream, but isn’t that contradicting to the first example in which the answer “writes” refers to Jason, and not “one of the three people”? I’m a bit skeptical towards this answer as well. I got a hunch the answer key is wrong?</p>
<p>Explanation:Antecedent of who is one. One is refers to jason(predicate nominative)</p>
<p>Tada that is it</p>
<p>My explanation is extremely brief. WHY? I am toooooo lazy to write the full explanation, and I dont want to write an explanation that you will ignore.</p>
<p>If you want the full explanation POST again.</p>
<p>Alright. Seems reasonable enough. Who does not refer to the three people, it refers to Jason. Hence, if we omit “of the three people I knew well in middle school”, the sentence would no longer be correct due to faulty noun-verb agreement. OK then.</p>
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<p>Let me just restate the obvious. What is who referring? Obviously, who does not refer to one. Why? Because if we omit “of the five girls”, the sentence makes no sense -> I will catch one who bullies me in class? So in this case, who refers to the five girls, which makes the sentence more comprehensible and consistent. Am I correct?</p>
<p>@all of you guys, thank you so much for investing so much of your time and effort into this;</p>
<p>well, @realityisadream, SirWanksalot,
I learned that the antecedent of a relative pronoun like “who” is usually the noun that is the closest to it. So, if I apply this principle:</p>
<p>Jason (is) the only one of the three people I (knew well) in middle school who still (write) to (me regularly). (No error)</p>
<p>The antecendent of “who” would be “the only one of the three people” since “of the three people” is an adverbial phrase for “one.” Correct?</p>
<p>Okay, my second question is with the very similar example sentence that I have provided:</p>
<p>I will catch one of the five girls who bullies/bully in class.</p>
<p>The same logic that I have applied with the above sentence tells me that “of the five girls” is the same adverbial phrase as “of the three people.” Thus, I feel that “one” is the antecedent and that “bullies” is correct. Can you explain this further? It just sounds like faltering logic to me to change the answer in this case. :)</p>
<p>I’m not really sure how I understood these two, but it was something along the lines of the following:</p>
<p>One, in the first example, was preceded by ‘the’ and it refers to Jason. Therefore, one defined something in particular which makes it the core of the sentence, and not “of the three people”. I think this is what an adjectival prep. phrase is?</p>
<p>In the second example, one, does not define anything or anyone in particular. It simply modifies the core of the sentence which is ‘of the five girls’, therefore ‘who’ actually refers to ‘of the five girls’, and not ‘one’. I think this is what an adjectival clause is?</p>
<p>I’m not sure of this, but that’s what I could infer.</p>
<p>o yeah ur explanation makes sense too lol but still murky on this :(</p>
<p>it’s just that in the first example the “who” is way behind so this distance negates the usual grammar rule that the closest noun before “who” is its antecedent, I guess.
However, in the second example, “who” directly follows “girls,” which translates into “girls” being the antecedent… …</p>
<p>i dunno; this was the best i could think of. </p>
<p>My sense is that in modern usage either the singular or plural is acceptable for both of the sample sentences, but that the plural is the more correct form for purists.</p>
<p>Turn the sentences “inside out”, with the prepositional phrase first. This shouldn’t change the correctness of the plural versus singular choice. The resulting sentences are clearly awkward and noone would write this way. But the rewrite should help to answer the question at hand.</p>
<p>So for the first sentence:
Of the three people I knew well in middle school who still [write/writes] to me, Jason is one.</p>
<p>And the second:
Of the five girls who [bully/bullies] me in class, I will catch one.</p>
<p>I dropped the “only” in the first sentence rewrite because it made the sentence unnecessary awkward. But it should be possible to add it in a way that doesn’t affect the sentence structure.</p>
<p>In any case, as rewritten I expect that the “plural” form is easy to justify.</p>
<p>BUT there are situations where grammaticians may argue for the singular. One example that I’ve seen is this:</p>
<p>I am one of those people who wants others to do what I think they should.</p>
<p>The emphasis above is on “one – me” and the choice of singular would serve to stress that.</p>
<p>My opinion is that these writing questions are much too subtle to ever appear on the official SAT.</p>
you do imply that i am a “purist”</p>