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"Is" or "are"?
"Is" or "are" after "internationalists" below?
"All over the country, a coalition of homeowners and anarchists, NIMBYs and internationalists is mustering to fight the greatest future cause of global warming: the growth of aviation."
"All over the country, a coalition of homeowners, anarchists, NIMBYs and internationalists is mustering to fight the greatest future cause of global warming: the growth of aviation."
OR "All over the country, a coalition of homeowners and anarchists; NIMBYs and internationalists are mustering to fight the greatest future cause of global warming: the growth of aviation."
I would use IS, because the verb refers back to "coalition", not "internationalists".
Id say are.....'cos the verb refers to a coalition of homeowners, anarchists, NIMBYs and internationalists , so its better to use are.
I agree with Uriel. Coalition is singular and therefore 'is' should be used.
>>"All over the country, a coalition of homeowners and anarchists; NIMBYs and internationalists are mustering to fight the greatest future cause of global warming: the growth of aviation." << That doesn't makes sense. >>All over the country, a coalition of homeowners and anarchists<< couldn't stand alone as a sentence and so you can't just put a semi-colon after it.
I would personally use "coalition" with a singular verb, but just note that in British English, plural verb forms can go with even single entities if that single entity is made up of more than one person. Compare the following:
US: "The team hasn't scored yet" UK: "The team haven't scored yet" US: "The government has not announced a new policy" UK: "The government have not announced a new policy" US: "The Clash is a well-known band" UK: "The Clash are a well-known band.
Guest and Uriel are correct. Coalition is singular (in America). I didn't know about the plural verb forms in British English described by Kirk - pretty interesting.
As has been mentioned in other threads, this modern trend in Britain is not followed in other English-speaking countries; it appears to be a UK-only aberration, where parsing sentences seems to be a lost art.
I think the use of plural verbs with a singular (but usually collective) subject is the triumph of feeling over correctness. In all cases a singular verb SHOULD follow a singular subject, but when the speaker/writer knows that s/he is thinking of a group of individuals, the temptation to use a plural verb is overwhelming. I have suffered with this myself, and have had to correct myself. The situation is worse when the subject precedes the verb by some distance, as in a lengthy sentence. Then one has the opportunity to forget that, even though a collective term was used in the singular, a group of individuals was the subject, and therefore mistakenly uses a plural verb.
>>I think the use of plural verbs with a singular (but usually collective) subject is the triumph of feeling over correctness. In all cases a singular verb SHOULD follow a singular subject, but when the speaker/writer knows that s/he is thinking of a group of individuals, the temptation to use a plural verb is overwhelming. I have suffered with this myself, and have had to correct myself. The situation is worse when the subject precedes the verb by some distance, as in a lengthy sentence. Then one has the opportunity to forget that, even though a collective term was used in the singular, a group of individuals was the subject, and therefore mistakenly uses a plural verb.<<
The matter is simply that in certain English dialect groups, for many singular collective noun usages it has come to be that verbs are to be conjugated as if they had a plural subject rather than a singular subject. This is in contrast to the rest of English, and even historically in said dialect groups, where in such cases verbs are to be conjugated as having singular subjects. What you are describing is simply that prescriptive standards may still specify the use of singular subjects in such cases (even though, to me at least, such seems quite archaic in the context of at least English English dialects), while most actual usage in the affected dialects today, even in formal writing, uses the use of conjugating verbs as plural. Consequently, one gets the conflict between prescriptive standards and actual usage, which of course is strongest if one, such as yourself, actually for some reason cares about such prescriptive standards even when much formal writing in said dialect group does not follow them. In cases like these, I myself would strongly recommend not caring a bit about prescriptive standards, even in writing; for English English dialects, this kind of thing is analogous to the use of "less" with countable nouns, as mentioned in another thread. Of couse, what you are speaking of does not apply in dialects where the normal everday usage is to conjugate verbs as singular in such cases. This kind of thing is really not about how people think of groups as individuals or as wholes, as much as you may think of it in such terms. It rather is simply about native usage in some dialect groups versus prescriptive standards and other dialect groups with different native usages. For example, to myself using a singular collective noun with a verb conjugated as having a plural subject is quite strange, and even though it is something which I have gotten used to from reading things written by individuals from the other side of the pond, it still intuitively seems off nonetheless.
I am not entirely sure I agree that "The matter is simply that in certain English dialect groups, for many singular collective noun usages it has come to be that verbs are to be conjugated as if they had a plural subject rather than a singular subject." Whereas this may be strictly true as a result, I suspect the cause may be along the lines I suggest. Things rarely happen for no reason at all.
I am also not against rules or standards as you appear to be. While I am also not for attempting to set languages in stone as museum pieces rather than as living evolving instruments of communication, I feel that having certain standards (such as with spelling) assists us to maintain comprehensibility rather than to restrict or confine. At least I hope so.
<<I am also not against rules or standards as you appear to be. While I am also not for attempting to set languages in stone as museum pieces rather than as living evolving instruments of communication,>>
No, I think you're misinterpreting what Travis means. No one's advocating that written standards be thrown out the window. Also, just because some examples of usage don't conform to prescriptivistic notions of how language "should" be doesn't mean that they're not adhering to rules that are equally as complex and nuanced. All native language usage, no matter the variety or dialect, is as subtly nuanced as any other usage even if you wouldn't write that way in a formal paper. It's very important to separate the notions of the formal written language and the actual spoken language as they are quite separate entities whose overlap is tangential, at best. Back to formal written norms, even within formal written standards of English (and many other written forms of languages) there are quite a few variations which are acceptable but vary according to region. The usage of collective singular nouns with plural forms of verbs by British writers is such an example. It reflects how the language is used by millions of native speakers there. Sure, such things wouldn't likely be written by an American but I don't think those examples truly cause confusion for others. <<I feel that having certain standards (such as with spelling) assists us to maintain comprehensibility rather than to restrict or confine.>> It might sound odd to uninitiated ears but I simply wouldn't believe it if someone told me they actually couldn't understand the meaning of a sentence due to a lack of an "-s" on the end of the verb there. At most, it sounds odd to others, but doesn't impede comprehensibility.
>>I am not entirely sure I agree that "The matter is simply that in certain English dialect groups, for many singular collective noun usages it has come to be that verbs are to be conjugated as if they had a plural subject rather than a singular subject." Whereas this may be strictly true as a result, I suspect the cause may be along the lines I suggest. Things rarely happen for no reason at all.<<
Such ideas are likely tied into the use of such forms in dialects where such forms are to be found today, but the initial origination of such forms is likely to really not be clear at all, as is the case with many phonological changes, which have seemingly occurred just because. >>I am also not against rules or standards as you appear to be. While I am also not for attempting to set languages in stone as museum pieces rather than as living evolving instruments of communication<< One thing that must be strongly stated is that all language varieties operate according to clear rules, even if these rules are never written or standardized at any point. Just because these rules are different from those which have been decreed as so by prescriptivists at some point or another and likely have never been put down to pen (or have only been written down by linguists) does not mean that they are not rules. In the case of the aforementioned way of conjugating verbs, it is definitely rule-driven, it is just that the rule(s) behind it happen to be different from those specified in prescriptive standards and those used by other dialects which follow the more conservative pattern of verb conjugation. >>I feel that having certain standards (such as with spelling) assists us to maintain comprehensibility rather than to restrict or confine.<< I too agree with Kirk here that I doubt that the new way of handling singular collective nouns in English English dialects really gets in the way of actual comprehension at all, even if it may seem unfamiliar to many. While it may seem rather strange to myself, for instance, it is still perfectly comprehensible nonetheless, and I would expect it to be much the same for most other English-speaking North Americans as well. |