Automattic / Automattic/harper

feat: Flag copulae/verbs agreeing with complement/object instead of subject

Open
#416 5 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement harper-core linting
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
15.4k
Forks
627
Avg merge
1d 12h
Merged PRs (30d)
106

Description

I've been noticing this in spoken English a lot on YouTube but I don't think it's new and I don't think it's limited to native or non-native English speakers:

Verbs, including auxiliary verbs and copulae (am, are, is, was, were, etc.) agree with the subject, so normally the nomonal phrase to its left. But under some circumstances some people get confused and make it agree with the complement of the copula or object of the verb:

- The main difference are the metadata fields.

→ The main difference is the metadata fields.
→ The main differences are the metadata fields.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No file, test, or entry point is named in the issue. Start by locating the existing subject–verb agreement rules and their tests, then determine how the reported copula example should be distinguished from valid complement constructions. Done means the incorrect singular/plural agreement is reported without flagging the valid alternatives.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.