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All people are a mystery.

Since the subject is plural, should the the predicate nominative mystery be also plural? And would the meaning still be the same? As in All people are mysteries.

How about the following?

All people are a phenomenon.

All people are phenomena.

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Sherlock
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    If you would use the plural "mysteries" you'd say that every single man is multiple mysteries. Somewhat weird, isn't it? – Em1 Sep 06 '13 at 08:03
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    But in These dogs are heroes, it surely doesn't mean that every single dog is multiple heroes. This is why I'm confused. Why can't I apply the same pattern to the sentence All people are mysteries to mean that every single person is a mystery? – Sherlock Sep 06 '13 at 08:31
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    I see. I try to make it clear this way: Compare: One dog but many dogs. One person but many people. So you need the plural verb form. "All people" however is a way of referring to any individual. You can replace "All people" with "everyone" or "everybody". Then again it's obvious that you'd say "Everyone is a mystery". Ouhh - wait. "All people are heroes" is fine again, I guess this is due mystery and phenomena being more abstract than hero. – Em1 Sep 06 '13 at 08:45
  • @Em1 But "Everyone's a critic" makes perfect sense, and neither critic nor hero abstract! Interesting, interesting.... – WendiKidd Sep 06 '13 at 14:16
  • Won't it suit better if we say everybody is a mystery? – aarbee Sep 08 '13 at 19:40
  • @Ramit Isn't is mysterious how everybody's a mystery ? :)) @ Sherlock: "These [specific] dogs are heroes [, but not all dogs are.]" But "All people are mysteries" *does* apply to every single person - because it says "All". If you had said "People are mysteries" that implies an unspecified number of people, and a native would understand it is hyperbole and philosophical. You leave it open - you imply perhaps humorously that it applies to everyone, but there will be exceptions. Ahh English is mysterious at times :)) – Howard Pautz Sep 11 '13 at 19:24
  • Are you sure about All people are mysteries? – Mistu4u Sep 24 '13 at 03:59
  • @WendiKidd Everyone is syntactically singular. Hence everyone is, not *everyone are. It doesn't matter whether the noun on the other side of the copula is abstract or not. –  Sep 26 '13 at 02:31
  • @snailboat Oh, I didn't realize the question was asking about is/are. I think I got caught up in the comments discussion and forgot the actual question xD – WendiKidd Sep 26 '13 at 03:45
  • Oh, I was trying to point out the difference between all people, which is plural, and everyone and everybody, which are (grammatically) singular. So we don't need to explain the difference by analyzing the rest of the sentence (though it can get complicated with notional agreement, where words like everybody can take singular verbs with plural NP complements). –  Sep 26 '13 at 06:14

3 Answers3

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Predicate nominative is a noun or pronoun that follows a linking verb and refers to the same person or thing as the subject of the verb.

Here, mystery is a noun that links the subject people with the verb "are".

As , verb is in agreement with the subject i.e. Subject : people, Verb: are.

So, to link the verb and subject , singular form of the predicate nominative mystery ( which is a noun form) is used.

Because ,if we use plural form then the verb and subject cannot be agreed with each other.

Basically, here noun "mystery" works as an adjective as it shows the quality of the people.

So, it's apt to use the adjective form of the word "mystery" to make it a perfect sentence.

We can write like this : All people are mysterious, All people are heroic. This sounds much better as here the nouns perform the role of the adjective.

Sweet72
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While it may appear at first glance that the sentence is unbalanced (All -pl. are - pl. a mystery), the "mystery" is resolved when one understands that "mystery" (and even people. for that matter) can act as a collective noun.

In such a situation, what appears to be a singular noun is, in fact, acting as a plural.

To write "All people are mysteries" removes the ambiguity, and may perhaps be "more correct," but the meaning of "All people are a mystery" is not grossly ungrammatical to the native ear.

Affable Geek
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"All people are a mystery" is ungrammatical because you have a plural subject and a singular complement. One should say "people are a mystery" or "all people are mysteries" or even "every person is a mystery."

Notice the differences between these three. "People are a mystery" means that people as a whole are one big mystery. "All people are mysteries" means that the set of all people is a set of mysteries. "Every person is a mystery" means each individual person is a mystery. For the verb "to be," the last two have equivalent meaning of course.

Compare: "At this school, all boys love girls" with "At this school, every boy loves a girl." The first claims the boys are all heterosexual, but the second claims they're monogamous too.

tchrist
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Greg Hullender
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