Native English speaker, could you explain simply?

[jj_700]

I'd thought that there isn't such a sentence like "she was the only who tried"; teachers and textbooks I got will, instead, say "she was the only ONE who tried.". They'll say that an adjective won't precede a relative pronoun( who, here) like this. However, I learned that native English speakers do say(technically write) "she was the only who tried." Honestly, I still can't believe that despite having found some people write so, so I want confirmation; I don't want to retain ambiguous things in my mind dictionary. People, is it correct that you can omit "ONE" like this and can say "she was the only who tried."? I hope you choose plain words and simple sentences in explaination.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comment, everyone. I first found it in a professional newspaper, as a reader's comment. Is it because it's a quote of a reader that they've published such a grammatically-incorrect sentence without correcting it?

(the original writing)
"My daughter went with five others from Canada and was the only who completed the year due to the bullying each student received from their JFIE supervisor as well as issues that JFIE refused to resolve on their behalf at their various high schools."
I knew about that the "the + adjective" form such as "the poor", "the good" etc, but here I was talking about "only". Also, I know that even professionals can make mistakes ilke anyone else; nobody's perfect. Before posting this question here, I googled "the only who (being followed by a verb)", and it hit more than 29,000,000 cases, which I noticed include the same articles and typos. I also know that some of the writers will not be native English speakers. Even if you take into account of those factors and estimate a half of it or third of it, there're still lots of people using "the only who" http://search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%22th...a1_sa&b=11 But I start to think it's not common saying so as you all explain. Let me keep the question open for possible further follow up.

[Abi]

I am from England and English is my native language.

Yes you can say that, it makes perfect sense

[jellybeans]

Technically, this can be correct when talking to someone. However, it is informal and grammatically incorrect. If you're writing, you shouldn't omit the 'one'. But if you're talking to someone in a normal conversation, then this is perfectly acceptable.

[bluebellbkk]

I've never heard or seen anyone say 'She was the only who tried". It may perhaps be used in very, very casual speech, but it is NOT standard English, and you shouldn't use it.

[NORMA m]

I am also a native speaker and have never heard or seen 'the only.......' without the word 'one' after it.

'Only' is an adjective and has to have a noun after it. You wouldn't say 'I like the big', for example. It would be "I like the big ONE'


I would think that the text you quote is a misprint, with the word 'one' accidentally omitted.

[Greg]

In my personal experience I've never heard that sentence. it makes perfect sense but generally "only" is used as an adjective. i assume it's colloquial. It's safe not to use it formally

[Cara]

"Only" is not a noun, so one cannot say "she is the only." So in the extract you've typed here it is a mistake, and should read " ... and was the only one who ..." (or "she was the only student who . . .").

[gary b]

As a native speaker of American English, I have to say that "she was the only who tried" looks like a typo. I would certainly class it as a usage error.

Mind you, I do disagree with your instructors. I can certainly construct a sentence which uses an adjective as a pronoun and follows that pronoun with the relative "who".

- It is only the stubborn who keep trying.

In that case, "stubborn" is an adjective acting as a pronoun and representing "stubborn people". The relative pronoun "who" uses "stubborn" as its antecedent. That sentence is perfectly acceptable English.

This is a question of usage and style, more than it is a question of grammar. An adjective can serve as a pronoun, certainly, but not /every/ adjective can do so. "Only" is an adjective that I would never use as a pronoun on its own.

I think it's because "only" has a sense of exclusion, and only makes sense when the scope of exclusion is known. Adverbs of number, for instance, seem to work just fine:

- These are the few who tried.
- No, there were several who tried.
- There may have been more who tried than I realize.

"Only" doesn't seem like enough. For instance:

- There was only one who tried.
- No, but there were only five who tried.


Also, I'd like you to keep something in mind. Everyone makes mistakes, even professionals, even the most highly skilled. Errors in published newspapers may be rare, but they do exist. It is, on the one hand, possible that the newspaper simply allowed the original correspondent's error stand. It is also possible, on the other hand, that the newspaper simply missed the error, regardless of whether the correspondent or the newspaper itself first committed the error.

~~~~
Edit:

Ok, 29 million hits for "the only who". These results include things like twitter updates, facebook status updates, quick replies in open forums, and goodness knows how many other sources where people don't even care about grammar. These results also include hits like "the only Who album", where "who" is not the relative pronoun but rather the proper name of a band.

A similar search for "the only one who" gets 713 million hits. That's a much larger number. That makes the 29 million look like a quite reasonable 4% error rate. Since most of the internet is not held to very high standards, a 4% error rate almost sounds low.

I still recommend thinking of the original quote as an error.