[ExI] Whimsy or error?

[Damien Broderick]

At 10:00 PM 8/25/2008 -0700, Lee wrote:

>And "zero of them is unaccounted for" just
>sounds terrible, and I'd say you're right to affirm that
>"zero of the politicians are worthy" is grammatically correct.

Do any actually living humans really utter either of these sentences? 
It sounds extremely contrived to me. "How forks are on the table?" 
"Zero are the number of forks." I don't think so.

Of course, there are plenty of vernacular commonplaces that breach 
formal prescriptive rules, and too bad for the rules. "Who's there?" 
"It is I." Even so, I get very antsy with "Him  and me got married 
last night." "You're not planning on having children, I trust."

Damien Broderick