Context: from the Wikipedia article on the Star Trek franchise:
My contention is that this sentence should utilize the plural construction “have” because “as well as” is being used in its conjunctive form (synonymous to “and”). Thoughts?
It’s not a well-constructed sentence, but I wouldn’t change the verb. As I read it, the phrase “as well as occasional animation errors” stands in apposition.
The addition of the animation errors clause provides additional information. The only verb remains reuse, which is singular.
A proper rewriting would introduce a second verb.
the liberal reuse of shots (pioneered by Jonnie ‘Roy’ White) and musical cues, as well as **the introduction of ** occasional animation errors, have detracted from the reputation of the series
I’m assuming reuse also applies to musical cues although that is also not clear from the sentence as written.
I don’t understand how this is so. What is in apposition to what?
I don’t quite understand that either, although I see the point. The clause has a strong feeling of being tacked on haphazardly, and I think it might defy grammatical explanation because it is, in fact, ungrammatical.
Either way, when I was about to suggest a different rewrite I saw Expano’s in preview and decided I liked it better.
Which is better?
John as well as Sally has eaten there before.
John as well as Sally have eaten there before.
The first seems better to me (though I don’t have any rules or anything to back that up) and for that reason I’d say the verb in your example should be “has” as well. So to speak, the sentence goes "… reuse … as well as … errors … has detracted … "
Which does not, itself, sound so hot to me, but if it’s parallel to my example sentence above then there you go.
Maybe these are our choices:
John as well as the children has eaten natto.
John as well as the children have eaten natto.
I don’t like either one, for some reason. The plurality of “children” throws me off or something. I know there’s a Language Log post somewhere about something like this–how sometimes concord is based on the nearest relevant word rather than the phrase so to speak “modified” by the term whose concord is in question.
-FrL-
I think it basically comes down to if “occasional animation errors” are being reused or not. If it’s an appositive, as mentioned, then the singular is correct (since reuse is singular) but if it’s a second subject in a compound subject, then the plural is correct.
Come on, guys, diagram the sentence!
[ul]
[li]The liberal reuse of shots (pioneered by Jonnie ‘Roy’ White) and musical cues as well as occasional animation errors has detracted from the reputation of the series.[/li][/ul]
Get rid of the parenthetical:
[ul]
[li]The liberal reuse of shots and musical cues as well as occasional animation errors has detracted from the reputation of the series.[/li][/ul]
Get rid of adjectives and adverbs (but not articles, for the sake of clarity):
[ul]
[li]The reuse of shots and cues as well as animation errors has detracted from the reputation of the series.[/li][/ul]
Get rid of prepositional phrases (which hold most of the meaning, but are not grammatically necessary):
[ul]
[li]The reuse as well as animation errors has detracted.[/li][/ul]
This is unintelligible without context, but grammatically correct—if the context were supplied (reuse of what, detracted from what), this is identical to the sentence we started with.
The cause of ambiguity is confusion as to what “as” is. It’s a subordinating conjunction—it introduces a subordinate or dependent clause. It doesn’t look like a clause because most words are omitted. If we replace the omitted words, what this sentence actually looks like is:
[ul]
[li]The reuse has detracted as well as animation errors have detracted.[/li][/ul]
See what that actually says? “The reuse has detracted well.” “How well?” “As well as animation errors have detracted.”
That sounds weird, but that’s what “as well as” means.
We think of it as a co-ordinating conjunction such as “and”, but it isn’t. If it were a co-ordinating conjunction, the sentence would look like this:
[ul]
[li]The reuse and animation errors have detracted.[/li][/ul]
But since it is a subordinating conjunction, the phrase it introduces does not affect the count of the verb. Subordinate clauses function as adverbs or adjectives (just as prepositional phrases do). Therefore, they don’t affect the subject-verb agreement. The subject of this sentence is the singular noun “reuse”—
[ul]
[li]The reuse has detracted.[/li][/ul]
—and therefore a singular verb is necessary.
Notice I used the very same approach in my post. I don’t think it’s necessarily the best approach in the world, but it works well enough in a rule-of-thumby kind of way.
“Come on, just diagram the sentence” isn’t generally good advice for this kind of question, though, because you can’t diagram a sentence without already knowing its (grammar school style) grammatical structure.
This seems like it is confusing etymology with meaning. It seems plausible to me that the “as well as” usage has its origin, historically, in a usage denoting something like what you’ve said here. But in contemporary, standard usage, “as well as” doesn’t get its meaning from a consideration of its parts (“as”, “well,” and “as”) and the manner in which they have been composed. Rather, it is treated grammatically as a unit, with its own meaning independent of that of its parts. Think of it this way: What’s “well” about anything mentioned in “John as well as Stacy has eaten natto before”? There’s nothing “well” about John, stacy, or their eating of Natto. The meaning of “well” does not figure into the meaning of the phrase “as well as” in that or almost any other sentence using that phrase.
The word “but” has its origin historically in a phrase “by out.” It meant, roughly, “outside of” and came to mean “other than” or something like that. The two words came to be pronounced together as one word. It would be a mistake to think that the meaning of “by” or “out” contributes to the meaning of “but,” and it would have been a mistake to think that the meaning of “by” and “out” contributed to the meaning of “by out” for quite a long time before they were finally “officially” contracted into a single word. It is similarly a mistake to think “as well as” gets its meaning (today, in standard usage) from the meanings of its constituent words. It’s its own thing.
-FrL-
Thank-you for what we have so far. I see what Exapno Mapcase and Frylock are saying. I’m wrestling, I guess, with the fact that the dictionary provides two definitions for the phrase “as well as.” One is synonymous with “and” making it a conjunction.
John is brave as well as loyal.
The other is synonymous with, well, with nothing really, but close in meaning to “in addition to” or “besides.” Here it is acting as a preposition.
The coach, as well as the team, is ready.
This latter construction I take to be the sort of “apposition” that Exapno is discussing, which is why the dictionary sets it aside with commas (I took the second example directly from Merriam-Webster Online).
But if what the sentence is saying is that “the reuse and the errors” contribute to the detraction, then it seems to me that the latter isn’t in apposition, but is acting in a conjunctive fashion. As shigyu helpfully points out, if it can be replaced by saying, “the reuse and the errors,” then “have” would be correct.
So if I turn my first example around, and say:
Brave as well as loyal are John’s traits.
Have I somehow altered the use of “as well as,” forcing reconstruction of the phrase to account for singularity, not plurality?
shigyu, while I think most of your post is helpful, I tend to agree with Frylock regarding the usage of “as well as.” You treat it as if it were the sum of its parts; the question is whether or not it has become synergistically something more than that.
Does anyone have a reference I can check on this? I’m curious about the construction, even though I think that I will utilize Exapno’s suggested re-write to avoid the awkwardness the current construction creates. 
From Theodore Bernstein’s The Careful Writer:
Bernstein also makes some technical discussion of “as well as” as a conjunction meaning “and not only” versus a preposition meaning “in addition to” or “besides.” If it is a conjunction, then the forms before and after the verb should be identical.
IOW, Not only was John late for dinner, but Jane also was.
And, not only is John loyal, but he is also brave.
Your original sentence had three parts: the liberal reuse of shots, the musical cues, the occasional animation errors. It’s unclear whether they are supposed to be three equal pieces or whether the errors are supposed to be subordinated to the others. That’s what I thought, and why I brought up the concept of apposition, in the sense of giving additional information, even if it’s not the technically correct application.
When you rewrite the sentence you should do so in a way that makes the relationship among the three parts clear. If you don’t know what the relationship is, rewrite the original into two sentences, so the the reader doesn’t have to guess.
I agree with the rest of you that shigyu is simply incorrect about equating “as well as” with well.
It’s a horrible sentence to begin with; “as well as” sounds good at the end of a sentence, long-winded at the beginning.
Thanks, Exapno. I think I will, at a minimum, put the animation errors part into a second sentence, or maybe in a clause after the rest of the sentence. 
To my reading “as well as” is a preposition; thus the singular subject stands.
This is one of those (many) areas of formal English uses for which logic isn’t particularly useful. “As well as” and “in addition to” are both treated in typical American editing practice as not “counting” as true conjunctions, so “X and Y are…” but “X, as well as Y, is…” As a previous poster noted, some grammars will try to rationalize this by claiming that the “as well as X” element is in apposition, but that works only by stretching the definition of “apposition” about as far as it can go.
Usage rules like this are based on a history of consensus, and while logic can play a role in the formation of the consensus, it doesn’t dictate it. Or, to put it another way, the verb ignores the “as well as X” element for roughly the same reason one cannot (or now can) wear white shoes after labor day.
Well, Theodore Bernstein was the head copyeditor of The New York Times for many years. His books were addressed to both reporters and the general public, and he used actual examples from sentences printed in the Times. He also wrote an in-house newsletter that advised reporters and editors about the intricacies of English.
The technical discussion of his I mentioned cites both Fowler and Jesperson on the competing roles of “as well as” as preposition and conjunction.
I’d be hard pressed to make a case that logic isn’t involved and that editors treat “as well as” in only one way. Just the opposite. This usage is one of true grammar, rather than the usual disputes we have around here that are about meaning, style, or usage and called grammar incorrectly. When real grammar is the issue, logic does enter the picture. Usage may be pulling in one direction, but the answers so far are not usage-based. (The correct ones, at least.)
As with so many English questions, the answer is that both are correct.
Consulting the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, pages 1316-7:
Both sentence examples are pulled from page 1316.
Thanks for the quote; it’s very illuminating. In the OP sentence, I don’t believe the construction is meant to be subordinate. The “as well as” phrase is being used (perhaps unconsciously) to hide the fact that the writer is joining a clause with a plural subject to one with a singular subject.
I still like Expano’s fix of making both clauses singular. But here’s a thought: for a quick fix, just delete “has” from the OP sentence. Try it. Not as nuanced, but suddenly your verb works for both the singular and plural subjects.
Doesn’t change what the subject is.
Reuse, as well as errors, has blah blah blah.
DSYoungEsq, as well as any supporters that may favor his perspective, is wrong.
Well, that might be. But in most cases where both alternatives are correct, I generally think that it’s best to defer to the actual writer of the piece.
Speaking about style, I don’t disagree at all that rephrasing the entire thing could improve the sentence. But style is more of an IMHO question, whereas I was answering the GQ factual question.
Read the cites that have already been provided before you post factually incorrect information. If you had paid more attention to the other posts in this thread, you would’ve found that you are incorrect. As well as does, in fact, change the subject of the sentence if it is being used for coordination.
I’ve already cited the Cambridge Grammar, a book that was so heavily researched it was over five years in the making. I’m sorry that this is not an internet cite, but it might still behoove you to actually research the question before you casually drop an error that demonstrates you weren’t even reading the thread.
The Cambridge Grammar says that both are correct grammatically, which is true. It’s a descriptive, not a prescriptive, text, and so if both are used in the real world, then both are perfectly correct from a grammatical perspective and both would be acceptable in an encyclopedia.
AHunter3 is saying that yours is incorrect logically, which is also true. The English language is certainly muddy, but it’s not so far gone that we can’t make decisions based on its mechanical properties.
Both are acceptable, and the way it appears in the OP makes more technical sense. The OP was asking if the sentence “should utilize the plural construction ‘have’”. The correct answer is no—it certainly can, but there’s no reason it should.
What it should do is use a proper co-ordinating conjunction, rather than one that would cause debates like this in the first place.