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Reading was very important to John's parents, both of them firsts in their families to go to college.

Is the nonrestrictive/relative clause "both of them firsts in their families to go to college" correct and has correct punctuation?

Or should it be "both of them being the firsts in their families to go to college"?

Should it be "first" instead of "firsts"; what rule governs it?

Another example: X and Y are the firsts in this town to do Z

edit: fixed; posted the other Q separately.

Joe Black
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    There're some semantic difficulties: 'both,' does that mean John has exactly two brothers? Also, how can they both be first in their families since there is only one family here, and there can be only one first? – Mitch Dec 02 '14 at 12:53
  • If they're twins? Or if they went to different types of colleges? Or if John's brothers grew up in different families, which is possible given the plural families. So yeah, more context for the first sentence. Is this something you found or wrote yourself? And what does 'cite' mean? – pazzo Dec 02 '14 at 13:01
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    It's not a restrictive relative clause; no verb. It's a noun phrase in apposition to John's parents. A cumbersome one, granted; the speaker is trying to pack too much into one sentence, a common problem. – John Lawler Dec 02 '14 at 16:05
  • Ok, so fixed the semantic issues with the sentence. Is it correct grammar? (even if the speaker is trying to pack too much) – Joe Black Dec 02 '14 at 16:17
  • Apologies for being pedantic, but shouldn't it be "...each of them first in his family..."? – IchabodE Dec 02 '14 at 18:20
  • @MBurke Typically one has one parent who is the first in his family and another who is the first in her family. Biologically, at least. It makes no sense to use his on a woman. – tchrist Dec 03 '14 at 03:03
  • @tchrist This is true, except the last part. In English, we don't use the gender-neutral pronoun 'it' to describe a person, and since each person is singular we also shouldn't use 'they'. We assume 'he' as in the phrase, "to each his own". Does it make sense? Is it sexist? Off the point? People argue. Some just assume 'she'. Also sexist? Time will tell. Saying 'his or her' all the time is just adding 2 extra words to every sentence. – IchabodE Dec 03 '14 at 04:39
  • @MBurke Um, no. Sorry, that isn’t how English works. You might like it to work that way for whatever reason, but it doesn’t. – tchrist Dec 03 '14 at 11:44
  • Simply because it is commonly done, doesn't mean it is correct. However, I will consider myself corrected given the evidence here, and will begin to use what does in fact feel natural and use 'the singular they'. I have simply been corrected too many times by various English teachers throughout my education. – IchabodE Dec 03 '14 at 17:51

1 Answers1

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The word category of ordinal numbers such as first is somewhat contentious. However, they behaves pretty much exactly like adjectives - which is what they probably are.

Consider the Original Poster's example:

  • Reading was very important to John's parents, both of them firsts in their families to go to college.

Here we see first occurring without a following noun. This is similar to what we observe with other adjectives functioning as 'the head of noun phrases', such as the rich or the poor, the disadvantaged or the good, the bad and the ugly.

Adjectives in English do not inflect for number, unlike nouns. In fact this is one of the very reasons why some writers argue that ordinal numbers are adjectives and not nouns: they do not inflect for grammatical number and have no 'plural' forms:

  • the elegant description
  • *the elegants descriptions
  • the first person
  • *the firsts people

Even though there is no noun following first in the OP's example, first is still an adjective here. It therefore cannot have an 's' suffix to indicate plurality.

The example should therefore read:

  • both of them first in their families to go to college.
Araucaria - Him
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