Learn English – Parsing the sentence “the number of people…”

grammarsyntactic-analysis

Here's a sentence I randomly thought of:

The number of people [who/that] don't give way to buses is staggering.

This sentence got me thinking about grammar and sentence structure and thus prompted this question. There are two parts to my question, which somewhat go together.

The first part is this: is "who" or "that" correct? I was fairly sure of "who", but then I thought, maybe it depends on how the first part of the sentence is parsed. Again, I'm fairly sure that #1 is correct; if it is, I'd also like to know whether #2 is plausible.

  1. (The number of) people who…

In #1, people are the focus, so "who" is used.

  1. The number (of people) that…

In #2, the number is the focus, so "that" is used (because the number is a concept).

This leads me to the second part of the question. What is the structure of the sentence? Below is what I think it is:

[The number of people] subject who [don't] verb [give way to] verb [buses] object [is staggering] phrase

(Is this also a clause on its own? Or is it a clause + a phrase?)

Now, if my breakdown of the sentence is correct, and the number of people is a compound subject, does that mean that (1) the first part of this question is moot, and (2) The number of people that doesn't is correct, despite linguistic norms?

In summary:

  • Is "who" or "that" correct? Why?
  • Have I analysed the sentence correctly?
  • Is the number of people a compound subject? If so, why don't we say the number of people that doesn't?
  • Is the entire sentence a clause, a clause + a phrase, or multiple clauses?

Best Answer

I think the reason for your confusion is twofold - one is that your parsing of the sentence is incorrect, the second is a confusion over the way that "that" may be used.

To address the first issue - the meaning of the sentence is the number is staggering; the prepositional phrase "of people [who/that] don't give way to buses" is there to answer the question which number. Therefore, at the most basic level, the sentence can be broken up into:

[The number of people [who/that] don't give way to buses] (subject) is (linking verb) staggering (subject complement).

The subject contains a prepositional phrase that is also a restrictive relative clause people who/that don't give way to buses. Therefore, the phrase "don't give way to buses" modifies people, not number or number of people.

Now that we have worked this out, we can answer whether "who" or "that" can be used. As it is a restrictive relative clause that refers to people in an abstract way, you can use either that or who (although there are some who will argue that it is much better/only appropriate to use who, in practice both are used). Answers to this related question already give some explanation, so I will not expand further on it here.

For those interested, this Oxford Dictionaries blog post and this Grammar Girl article discuss the usage of who vs that.

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