Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Marrion]

A couple of people are playing football on the grass.
A couple of people is moving out of the train.
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I have seen that "a cople of + plural nouns" is used with both plural verbs and singlar verbs on the Internet.

And then I wonder "couple" is a "group noun(collective noun)" in these sentences.

[redset]

It depends if you're talking about them as a single group (the couple) or as several individual people - that's how you decide whether or not use a singular or plural verb. A couple of people is usually an informal way of saying 'two people', so you're talking about the individuals and not a group - you need to use the plural verb.

If you refer to two people as 'a couple' though, you're talking about two people who are romantically linked, so you can look at 'the couple' as referring to the single group or the two people. In that case you can use plural or singular verbs, depending on how you want to represent them.

[Marrion]

I got it. I can understand your explaination.


One more question:

At "a couple of", must "couple" be a group(collective) noun?