Automattic / Automattic/harper

Missed Subject-Verb Agreement (Notional Agreement with Time Units)

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#4,044 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
agreement enhancement grammar harper-core linting
Dominant language
Rust
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

I noticed a missed subject-verb agreement error with units of time acting as a singular block.

Example text:
"33 years sound like a career politician from the establishment"

Expected behaviour:
The grammar checker should flag "sound" and suggest "sounds".

Linguistic context:
While "33 years" is grammatically plural, units of time, money, and distance use notional agreement. They represent a single collective block of time and require a singular verb. The software currently fails to treat these quantified plural time phrases as singular subjects.

(Disclaimer: I rewrote my original issue with an AI that knew all the correct terms and how to explain what I spotted with my intuition but didn't know all the technicalities to fully describe.)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No files or tests are named. Start by locating the subject-verb agreement rule and its existing tests, then reproduce the example “33 years sound like a career politician from the establishment.” Done means the checker flags “sound,” suggests “sounds,” and preserves existing agreement behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
62/100

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