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Is the following sentence grammatically correct: "Alice on our team has been excellent in managing tasks."

I'd rather substitute "from" or "in" instead of the "on" in this sentence. Can someone please help me understand which usage is correct in this example.

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  • What leads you to believe that "on" may be incorrect?
    – Matt Gutting
    Commented Jun 12, 2015 at 17:09
  • That construct sounds odd anyway...I'd say it like this: "Our team member, Alice, has been excellent in managing tasks."
    – Kristina Lopez
    Commented Jun 12, 2015 at 17:22
  • It is the use of prepositions that most distinguishes American and British forms of the language. In America one appears on a team, or has eleven players on our team. In Britain we find ourselves in the team for the match on Saturday.How many players are there in a rugby team?
    – WS2
    Commented Jun 12, 2015 at 17:32
  • @MattGutting The on usage plainly sounded odd.
    – learning_fly
    Commented Jun 12, 2015 at 17:41
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    I might have said On our team, Alice has been ..., or perhaps Alice, who's on our team, has been ... But it sounds fine to me.
    – Matt Gutting
    Commented Jun 12, 2015 at 17:50

2 Answers 2

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Prepositional usage is idiosyncratic, with even apparently near-identical structures not being similarly available.

Both on our team and in our team are grammatical and used; on our team seems to be the more common choice according to these Google Ngrams (though the two seem equally common in British works).

There are over 300 000 Google hits for both everyone on our team and everyone in our team (though Ngrams paint a different picture). But I'm quite familiar with this type of post-modifier; neither prepositional usage can be considered incorrect.

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  • I am marking your response as the answer. Appreciate the help!
    – learning_fly
    Commented Jun 14, 2015 at 14:01
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You are right, a lot of non-natives would prefer "in". But English says "on the team / on the staff".

"On + person group" meaning someone is a member of this group is a special niche of on every learner stumbles on.

Why this curious use? Some uses of on are really hard to explain. I can only give my guess. The underlying idea seems to be "someone was elected or taken on as a member".

Ultimately you have to learn this special use of on.

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  • Thanks for responding. I agree that it is the non-nativity with AmE that could raise doubts on the usage.
    – learning_fly
    Commented Jun 14, 2015 at 14:05

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