I read those two sentences in opposition. “I am one of those people” emphasizes the person, singular. “Company XYZ is one of the few true partnerships” emphasizes the partnerships, plural. That’s why my link cites Burchfield as using “I am one of those people” as an exception to the rule that we use the plural verb. It is, but the OP’s sentence is not.
The one that remains.
simplest version of the sentence possible - “remains” implies that there was or is more than one that could remain.
The entire sentence begins with “Founded in 1900, Company XYZ is…” That suggests to me that the emphasis is on Company XYZ: it was founded in 1900, not the partnerships.
But I’ll say this: I started out the thread thinking that the recommendation to rewrite the sentence was a cop out, because there is a single correct answer. The discussion has me reconsidering. I still think my interpretation is right based on what I believe the intended emphasis to be, but I recognize that there’s more nuance than I initially thought.
"Company XYZ is one"
Right there you’ve got agreement of number – “one” goes with “is.”
But the company is one of what? Why, it’s “one of the few.”
One of the few what?
"of the few true partnerships that remain"
And again you’ve got agreement of number – “partnerships” goes with “remain.”
One is, partnerships remain. The sentence in the OP is correct.
It would be different if it were something like “Company XYZ is one of the widget partnerships, and it remains top-rated.” In that case, the co. is a partnership AND the co. remains top-rated. But in this case “that remain among the top banking firms of the world” directly applies to “true partnerships,” and only indirectly to the co.
While I admire your willingness to re-examine the issue based on the evidence we’ve presented, the pedagogue in me feels the need to say that there is and always was one correct answer: the way it was originally written. Please take that as an affirmation of English and not a slam at you.
Eh, I disagree. I don’t see how you argue that the emphasis of the sentence is on “partnerships” given the entire text (“founded in 1900…”). It is meant to draw attention to Company XYZ, not the partnerships.
But at this point we’re going back and forth with the same arguments, so I’ll leave it at: well fought. Language pedagoguery is always fun.
By saying, “Company XYZ is one of…” you have shifted the focus from XYZ to whatever it is one of and that “whatever” is automatically plural because XTZ is only of many.
My dog is one of the dogs that live in my neighborhood.
The “emphasis of the sentence” is irrelevant. The subject and verb of the “partnerships that remain” phrase is relevant, and they must agree in number with each other, not with some other part of the sentence.
Please see this from above.
So the emphasis of the sentence is relevant. Is the writer trying to convey that partnerships remain? Then the plural case is correct. Are they trying to convey that Company XYZ remains? If so, then “of the partnerships” is a subordinate clause, the subject is one, and the verb should be singular.
Exapno Mapcase argues that “partnerships” is clearly and unequivocally the emphasis. I argue that attention is being drawn to Company XYZ, as evidenced by the intro of “founded in 1900.” I might be wrong as to where the attention is drawn in the sentence, but it is incorrect to say that the emphasis of the sentence is irrelevant.
In my first post I said “‘the few true partnerships that remain in the world’ is therefore a connected set of words that must be correct and consistent within itself.”
Emphasis is part of a more general argument concerning “one”.
EM is right, but I think his terminology is confusing. The phrase “that remain among the top banking firms of the world” is an adjective clause, and it modifies the word “partnerships” and thus should agree in number.
Talking about it with the word “subject” gets it mixed up with the subject of the sentence, which is indeed singular. But neither “one” nor “partnerships” is a subject, and so any rule about taking out the prepositional phrase to determine the subject is not relevant.
Emphasis is not relevant. What is is whether or not it is “the partnerships” that remain, or if “one of the partnerships” that remains. I and others say the latter does not make sense.
I will, however, say that a google search for parallel constructions, using “is one few * that” (with the quotes) and looking for those followed by a present tense verb shows that this may be in flux. Still, the few grammar guides I found agree that the construction is plural.
Break the sentence down.
Company X - noun phrase
is - verb phrase agreeing with the previous subject noun phrase
one of the few true partnerships that remain - adjectival phrase modifying the company. How do you know it’s an adjectival phrase? You could take it out, replace it with an adjective and it would still make sense. That’s why “one of the few true remaining partnerships” would make sense - that’s an adjectival phrase too.
You then break down that adjectival phrase further, but the verb phrase and noun phrase within that adjectival phrase must agree with each other, not with the noun they’re modifying, because that’s in a separate noun phrase. In English, unlike many languages, adjectives do not change to agree with the noun they’re modifying - you don’t say bigs dogs and likewise here you don’t use a singular verb with the plural noun (companies) just because that noun is part of an adjectival phrase that modifies a singular noun.
Remain remains correct.
However, McCall’s magazine goofed on just this point in a series of 80’s ads showing people like Tina Turner against the caption “one of the drab (dull? dreary?) housewives who reads McCall’s”.
Everybody’s talking about the ‘partnerships’, but not many posts have mentioned the ‘few’.
If the sentence was “Few companies remain among the top bankers in the world”, we would all agree that it’s wrong to add an S to remain.
And similarly: “Few partnerships remain among the top…”
So I vote for “remain”---- not remains.
That’s because the focus of the sentence is the “one.” The sentence is describing Company XYZ, which is one of the few true partnerships (and therefore singular), as opposed to the partnerships themselves.
See, if English had cases we could just put “Company XYZ,” in the nominative and “true partnerships,” in the genitive, and then everyone would know right away that the verb should agree with the nominative noun. Damn you, English.
Sorry for the double post, but I’m not allowed to edit my last post, so I’ll just clarify my point here:
In the sentence “the children on the diving board jump in,” the structure is essentially the same as that of the sentence in the OP: [noun][preposition][noun][verb] with a few additional words denoting quantity (which don’t change the syntax). Obviously, the diving board isn’t jumping, but the children are, so we’d write “jump,” and not “jumps.” The same applies to the sentence in the OP: the partnerships are not remaining, but Company XYZ is. Therefore the answer is “remains,” because the verb has to agree with “Company XYZ,” in number.
And there’s the crux of it – who is remaining. I don’t agree that XYZ is remaining. The sentence is telling us that XYZ is one of the few. “[P]artnerships that remain…” is a phrase modifying few, telling us just which few XYZ happens to be one of.
I will concede that it could be interpreted the other way, “XYZ remains…,” but that meaning, and the way its being one of the few partnerships is mentioned, do not flow readily and idiomatically from the way the sentence is constructed.
In the end we may only reach agreement on the notion that the sentence could have been written more clearly.
The sentence structure is not the same. The structure there is noun phrase (the children) adjective phrase (on the diving board) verb phrase (jump in).
Imagine a train had gone past halfway through the sentence so you couldn’t hear the sentence after “of.” You’d ask “company XYZ is one of what?” You wouldn’t expect the answer to be “the few true partnerships that remains,” would you?
And that’s how I see it, but here’s how I think others are seeing it:
One of what? One of the few true partnerships. And besides being one of those partnerships, it remains…
If I were trying to express that meaning, I would say “Founded in 1900, Company XYZ is one of the few true partnerships, and it remains among the top banking firms of the world.”
The word “that” seems much more naturally associated with “partnerships” than with “XYZ,” especially since there’s no comma between “partnerships” and “that.” Given the overall sentence structure I find it awkward and somewhat convoluted to see XYZ as the subject of remains, rather than to see partnerships as the subject of remain.
Well, that’s the point. We only have the evidence of the sentence itself to go on: it certainly doesn’t state that there are no other partnerships in banking.
It seems pointless to indicate that there are a few other partnerships (in unspecified fields of activity, but we know that across the whole range of commercial activity there are plenty), if the object of the sentence is to indicate that XYZ is the only partnership in banking. The construction seems intended to indicate that there are some (few) partnerships in banking, of which XYZ is one, in which case the verb is plural.