Job Discussion Forums

Sheep-Goats · Joined: 16 Apr 2004 Posts: 527

British treat collective nouns as plurals, Americans treat them as singulars. If there are exceptions to this, I don't know them off the top of my head.

British: Man U go to the final.

American: Baltimore goes to the final.

lajzar · Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 647 Location: Saitama-ken, Japan

Really? i always thought British English treatds collectives as singular or plural depending on context or the impression you want to present.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

lajzar is quite right. The subject verb agreeement for collectives in English depends on notional agreement.

That said, the Americans are much more likely to treat collectives as singular than the British. 'government' is nearly alway singular in American English (even though they have a plethora of them).

Incidentally there are three factors which determine verb agreement in English.

Now in the best of all sentences all three coincide but this often does not happen. Problems, and differences between regional Englishes, occur when you have to chose between the three. British English tends to value the second factor over the first, whilst American English does the opposite. The third factor used to override the other two has been called "spurious agreement" but may slowly be creeping into mainstream usage, particularly in Australia. Another linguistic change that appears to be happening is the use of 'there is' instead of 'there are'.