Re: a "group question"

On 06 Nov 2005, Arne H. Wilstrup wrote

>
> "Harvey Van Sickle" <harvey.news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> skrev i en
> meddelelse news:Xns9706A239DD450whhvans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>> That's a regional thing. What you say holds true in
>> NAmerEng but
>> not in BrEng, where collective nouns regularly attract a
>> plural
>> verb.
>
> exactly.
>>
>> "The cabinet have discussed this point", "Chelsea are
>> unbeatable",
>> and "the family are" are perfectly normal and standard
>> constructions in both formal and informal BrEng.
>
> yes! And I wrote earlier in this thread that I was referring
> to British English. Thank you for the precision. :-)
>
> But I still don't know why there is this difference. :-(

I've not really been following the thread closely, but if you mean
"why does a collective noun/group sometime attract a singular and
sometimes a plural verb?", it has to do with with whether the
members of the group are being considered as a unit or as
individuals. My feeling, though, is that the plural appears much
more often than the singular.

(If you mean "why is there a pondial difference?" -- that is, why
does NAmer restrict collective nouns to a singular verb, while
BrEng allows plural -- well, I just look at it as one of the
anomalies that happens when a language develops different
conventions in different places.)

--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian (30 years) and British (23 years)
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van

.

Relevant Pages

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