I wouldn't be surprised if teachers think they speak "correctly" but
don't. There is a large literature in psycholinguistics (language
production processes) on subject-verb agreement errors, or slips of the
tongue, showing many different influences on the conditions where they are
most likely emerge. The number of such errors in really quite surprising;
you have only to look at edited articles in journals or newspapers to see
that even there they persist. These are outright grammatical errors that
we think we don't make, but do, so not even a matter of dialect or
register, just something unintended, yet also unperceived. Another
interesting source is my own archived emails! And of course we all know
grammar snobs who think that they know all about when to use "whom" and
then say things like "I don't know whom is to be trusted". Sometimes
grammatical complexity goes beyond our capacity to keep tabs on unfamiliar
usages, which are the grammar snobs' favourite target.
ron
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