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[seperley]

I am working with a Chinese English book which considers collective nouns as singular as well as plural.

For example:

The family are here.
The team are playing football.

I can find reference to collective nouns used as both plural and singular in a book titled "English Composition and Grammar", Benchmark Edition, by John E. Warriner, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988.

This seems to fly in the face of the definition of the collective noun. A collective noun names a group: a jury, a band, a family, an army, a flock. The collective noun is also considered singular.

I told the class that yes, one may hear that "The family are here." Some style books allow this, but it is not the American Standard preferred usage. Strictly speaking, the verb and the subject do not agree.

Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich states that collective nouns are plural "... when the speaker [!?] is thinking of the individual members in the group."

I asked the class if the following were correct:

"The army are here."

"The class were present."

The consensus was that neither is correct.

The same reference book (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich) states that collective nouns may be considered plural when the speaker "is thinking of of the individuals" of the group.

Example: The audience were entering the theater.

My advice to the class was to consider collective nouns as singular at all times because then the writer's intent cannot be mistaken, and the writer will be inarguably correct.

This same Chinese workbook states that the following is grammatically correct:

A number of lawyers are in the conference room.

The book explains that "a number of" is a modifier which means "many".
Hence the subject of the sentence is lawyers rather than number.

I can find no support for this. Can someone direct me to a stylebook that can support this? The Chinese workbook cites no references in English anywhere in it, so I cannot check the veracity of this example.

Helping the class to make a distinction between acceptable and preferred is nearly impossible. At this point, I am -- despite my background in education-- an idiot because their workbook defaults to common usage rather than to the preferred or even standard usage.

Another habit which I cannot extinguish in their writing is the students' insistence upon using the terms, firstly, secondly, thirdly fourthly, fifthly, etc.. They've always written like this so they will always write like this.

"Secondly" is supported by many stylebooks, but the others?

Comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[adamsmith]

I will only comment on the usage of army (or other group such as this). While army is a collective noun it is treated as a singular noun because it can also be used in the plural form.
Ie: the armies of different countries have arrived for their exercises.
for plural.

As a collective - you would use it in the singular Ie: The army is in a defensive position.

collective nouns use a singular form for verb conjugation. When collectives are used in the plural form then they take the plural conjugation of verbs.

IE: I like to collect monies from all different countries of the world.

(and yes - this is a proper usage of money in a plural form versus the collective (normal usage) of the noun) It just refers to the different currencies and denominations of the money.

[Henry_Cowell]

Here we go again!

[kev7161]

Try this link:

http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/collectivenoun.htm

Found it by googling.

Simple, easy to follow, gives a good alternative at the bottom of the page if in doubt - - your students should be able to follow it easily. There may even be a work sheet to accompany it. I didn't have time to scan all of them.

[daodejing]

"The army are..." I don't think so. Maybe the word "all" some of the time. All is not lost. All are going.

[Steppenwolf]

Seems we are witnessing developments underway, things are in flux.

I used to think "the Olympic Games" would be followed by verbs indicating the plural use; however you will now only see statements such as this:
"The Olympic Games takes place in Beijing in 2008..."

Nominalised adjectives such as "politics' seem to require a verb in the 3rd person singular ("politics is dirty").

But nouns in the singular form that refer to collectives imperiously demand a verb in the plural form: number, police, et cetera.

Football teams (Manchester United, China, Germany) are plurals - they "play", 'win' or 'lose'.

Maybe this tendency has been reinforced by the relatively new phenomenon of using 'their' in reference to 'he or she' as in:
"If a foreigner wants to marry a foreigner, then THEY must undergo a medical examination...". The anti-sexism zealots gone a step too far.

[DaXiangLouis]

[seperley]

Thanks to all.

SEP

[Henry_Cowell]

[daodejing]

So we're not all speaking the same language here. Maybe Ali G had a point when he told Andy Rooney that the differences between British and American English explained why Ali thought that "does you think..." is grammatically correct

[KarenB]

The way the Chinese text I use explains it is that the collective noun is considered singular if it is referring to a single unit (even though there may be several people or things in that unit), and plural if otherwise.

For instance:
The student body elects a new president each year.
(a single unit, thus treated as single, which demands "elects" not "elect" as verb)
The Smith family travels a lot in their new Winnebago.
(here family is considered a a single unit).

But when referring to a collective noun and the emphasis is on the various members of that unit, then it is considered plural and takes the plural verb.

The Smith family are all here. (referring to individual members of the family)
The student body express their individual opinions in the open forum.
(referring to individual members of the student body)

[Gregor]

This really is mostly a case of British vs American usage. Both are correct, and so seems to be the Chinese English text the OP is using.

What I find more interesting is the use of third person plural in the stead of indeterminate-sex third person singular, i.e. Every student must get their books after registration. That's a bad example, because it's easy to fix - change "each student" to "All students."
This used to make me crazy, but not so much anymore. What makes me crazy is finding myself in a situation where it's NOT so easy to recast the sentence, and then having to use "their" or "his/her" or some similar circumlocution. because, as anti-PC as I prefer to be, I can't bring myself to use the still-technically-correct masculine pronoun for the ambiguity, as is the case in most languages that have this issue (like Chinese, for example).
We need a neutral pronoun, and what we're getting - in fact, what we, as English speakers are slowly forcing into existance - is the use of the plural for singular as well.
That's an OK solution, I suppose. It would be very difficult in an unregulated language like English to get everyone to agree on a whole new word. The problem I see with making this correct, standard English (which it surely will be, sooner or later) is similar to the problem we have today with having only one form of the second person pronouns. That has been a serious problem. "You" can mean pretty much ANYBODY, and it causes problems. it causes so many that a lot of dialects choose their own form for plurals (i.e. the Scottish "yous," northern mid-west American "you guys,"and the American south "y'all," which in fact I use).

Just saying is all. No suggestions. Just sayin'.

[DaXiangLouis]

[Henry_Cowell]

[william wallace]

nil