Re: subject and verb number match?

jj <NoEmailPlease@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[trim]

Off in the distance, a group of birds begins to chirp loudly.

[trim]

I stated my point simply: that the subject of the sentence (group) and
the verb (begin(s)) should match in number. I was surprised that people
who agreed that, "A group begins to chirp..." was correct, were unwilling
to acknowledge that, "A group of birds begins to chirp" was equally
correct.

Eventually, someone played a trump card by claiming that there is some
(unwritten?) rule that says colloquial English of the sort that I
originally wrote is as valid (at least for our purposes) as 'proper',
grammatically-correct English.

Since I am no grammar expert, and can barely distinguish a preposition
from a participle, I wonder if someone with more knowledge can clear up
this confusion for me. What would the 'rule' governing my examples be?
Am I correct in asserting that my original example was an error, or is
there some leeway allowed these days, as others have claimed?

I posted this four days ago in response to a similar question:

Also called the Principle of Proximity, in the Columbia Guide to
Standard American English at Bartleby.com .

If a subject is widely separated from its verb by
intervening modifiers, and if the intervening
material differs in number from the subject, it is
quite likely in speech that proximity (or
attraction) will govern, and agreement between
subject and verb will be notional rather than
grammatical:

Everything I've heard about their appeals and
interventions suggest that they're going to delay us.

Edited English does not permit this
sort of lapse, although the lower levels of speech
and Informal writing often overlook it.

So the "unwritten rule" your friend knew of says that this is very
likely to happen. It's a descriptive rule, not a prescriptive one.

--
Best -- Donna Richoux
.

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