Should it be "The team is" or "The team are"?
Well, both are acceptable and the choice depends on how the group word team is viewed.
Like family, jury, choir and committee, the word team is a collective noun. Unlike a common countable noun such as boy or table, which always requires a singular verb in the present tense, a collective noun can be used with either a singular or plural verb:
(1) Our team hopes to win the championship.
(2) Our team hope to win the championship.
In sentence (1), the word team is conceived as one entity and takes the singular verb hopes. In sentence (2), the same word is viewed as a group of people and so takes a plural verb with no inflection.
All collective nouns that name groups of members can usually be treated the same way. "Usually" because sometimes only the singular sense of the collective noun is possible. Sentence (3) below, where the group is being considered as a unit, illustrates this singular use (Quirk et al. 216):
(3) The audience was enormous.
Applying the plural sense of audience to sentence (3) would lead to an awkward sentence:
(4) ?The audience were enormous.
Whether we treat collective nouns as singular or plural, it is important to be consistent:
5) The committee has submitted its plan.
6) The committee have submitted their plan.
If we intend to use committee in the singular sense, then our choice of the singular verb has should match the singular possessive pronoun its.
However, if we choose the plural meaning of committee accompanied by the plural have, we should correspondingly use the plural their.
Inconsistency in the treatment of collective nouns can result in grammatically odd sentences:
(7) ?The committee has submitted their plan.
(8) ?The committee have submitted its plan.
(The ? indicates the sentence is grammatically odd.)
If we are unsure about the number of the collective noun, or to avoid agreement issues, we can add the word members to collective nouns such as committee or use the word players instead of team:
(9) The committee members have submitted their plan.
(10) Our players hope to win the tournament.
Saturday 28 April 2012
Wednesday 18 April 2012
Small comma, big difference
One of my students from my tuition class told me she thought something was wrong with the example below, but couldn't quite figure out why:
She was right. It's unfortunate that the example on the use of whose at the beginning of the synthesis exercise had a mistake.
The relative clause whose project is due next Monday should have been set off by commas.
Without the commas, the relative clause is restrictive. Restrictive clauses define or restrict the noun they modify. However, Steven is a proper name and proper names have a specific reference and do not need further defining.
The sentence should have been written as follows:
(1) Steven, whose project is due next Monday, has fallen ill.
With the commas, the relative clause becomes non-restrictive and merely adds non-defining information to the proper noun Steven.
The restrictive version would be correct if we wanted to refer to a certain Steven. To do this, we use the definite article the:
(2) The Steven whose project is due next Monday has fallen ill.
Sentence (2) refers to a particular Steven, and the restrictive clause serves to pick out that specific individual.
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| Conquer Synthesis & Transformation, 2009 |
The relative clause whose project is due next Monday should have been set off by commas.
Without the commas, the relative clause is restrictive. Restrictive clauses define or restrict the noun they modify. However, Steven is a proper name and proper names have a specific reference and do not need further defining.
The sentence should have been written as follows:
(1) Steven, whose project is due next Monday, has fallen ill.
With the commas, the relative clause becomes non-restrictive and merely adds non-defining information to the proper noun Steven.
The restrictive version would be correct if we wanted to refer to a certain Steven. To do this, we use the definite article the:
(2) The Steven whose project is due next Monday has fallen ill.
Sentence (2) refers to a particular Steven, and the restrictive clause serves to pick out that specific individual.
Tuesday 10 April 2012
There is or there are?
Does the sentence below sound odd to you?
(1) There are a cat and a dog in the field.
If it does, you are probably not alone.
A friend had asked me some time back whether it should be (2) instead:
(2) There is a cat and a dog in the field.
The short answer is no, and the long answer will take us to two differing views.
Traditional grammars argue for sentence (1) because the plural are agrees in number with the plural a cat and a dog, similar to the kind of agreement obeyed in the following pairs:
(4a) Some water is in the pond.
(4b) There is some water in the pond.
(5a) Many trees are planted here.
(5b) There are many trees planted here.
(4a) and (5a) are declarative sentences while (4b) and (5b) respectively are the expletive "There" counterparts.
Notice that it's easier to see the number agreement between Some water and is and that between Many trees and are in the declarative structure than in the expletive structure, since Some water and Many trees occupy the prototypical subject position in (4a) and (5a).
The trick, therefore, is to turn sentence (1) into a declarative sentence to make this agreement obvious to see:
(6) A cat and a dog are in the field.
We now have a straightforward conjoined plural noun phrase A cat and a dog in the subject position agreeing with the plural be verb are, and this same plural be verb should be used in the "There" structure as we saw in (4b) and (5b), where the is and are respectively mirror their more prototypical counterparts.
This preference for the plural are in sentence (1) is the position held by traditional grammarians and echoed by others such as Grammar Girl.
In actual usage, however, there is a preference by most native speakers to choose the verb that agrees in number with the noun or noun phrase nearest to it (Marianne Celce-Murcia et al, 1998). This preference can be explained by the Proximity Principle.
According to this principle, subject-verb agreement should occur with the subject noun nearest to the verb. Sentences (7) and (8) below illustrate this rule:
(7) Either John or his friends are attending the party.
(8) Either the students or their teacher was present.
In (7), the plural subject noun friends is nearer to verb to be than John, so the plural are is chosen. Similarly in (8), the singular subject noun teacher is nearer to the verb to be, so the singular was is preferred.
With expletive constructions, the proximity rule will give rise to the following two sentences:
(9) There is a cat and two dogs.
(10) There are two dogs and a cat.
So should we apply the proximity principle to "There" constructions? Well, no. Particularly in formal contexts, the grammatically acceptable version is the one based on the traditional prescription.
(1) There are a cat and a dog in the field.
If it does, you are probably not alone.
A friend had asked me some time back whether it should be (2) instead:
(2) There is a cat and a dog in the field.
The short answer is no, and the long answer will take us to two differing views.
Sentences beginning with "There" are termed expletive sentences. The word "There" is called a dummy subject whose purpose is to introduce the sentence. It does not refer to anything nor does it encode any grammatical information.
Traditional grammars argue for sentence (1) because the plural are agrees in number with the plural a cat and a dog, similar to the kind of agreement obeyed in the following pairs:
(4a) Some water is in the pond.
(4b) There is some water in the pond.
(5a) Many trees are planted here.
(5b) There are many trees planted here.
(4a) and (5a) are declarative sentences while (4b) and (5b) respectively are the expletive "There" counterparts.
Notice that it's easier to see the number agreement between Some water and is and that between Many trees and are in the declarative structure than in the expletive structure, since Some water and Many trees occupy the prototypical subject position in (4a) and (5a).
The trick, therefore, is to turn sentence (1) into a declarative sentence to make this agreement obvious to see:
(6) A cat and a dog are in the field.
We now have a straightforward conjoined plural noun phrase A cat and a dog in the subject position agreeing with the plural be verb are, and this same plural be verb should be used in the "There" structure as we saw in (4b) and (5b), where the is and are respectively mirror their more prototypical counterparts.
This preference for the plural are in sentence (1) is the position held by traditional grammarians and echoed by others such as Grammar Girl.
In actual usage, however, there is a preference by most native speakers to choose the verb that agrees in number with the noun or noun phrase nearest to it (Marianne Celce-Murcia et al, 1998). This preference can be explained by the Proximity Principle.
According to this principle, subject-verb agreement should occur with the subject noun nearest to the verb. Sentences (7) and (8) below illustrate this rule:
(7) Either John or his friends are attending the party.
(8) Either the students or their teacher was present.
In (7), the plural subject noun friends is nearer to verb to be than John, so the plural are is chosen. Similarly in (8), the singular subject noun teacher is nearer to the verb to be, so the singular was is preferred.
With expletive constructions, the proximity rule will give rise to the following two sentences:
(9) There is a cat and two dogs.
(10) There are two dogs and a cat.
So should we apply the proximity principle to "There" constructions? Well, no. Particularly in formal contexts, the grammatically acceptable version is the one based on the traditional prescription.
Saturday 7 April 2012
News..has
News of radiation leaks from one of Japan's nuclear plants have sparked off concerns among many netizens in Singapore.There's a mistake in that sentence (read full story here). Can you spot it?
The mistake arises from subject-verb concord. This rule relates to number agreement between the subject and the verb that follows it:
(1) My cat sleeps all night
(2) My cats sleep all night.
In (1), the singular subject My cat agrees in number with the singular verb sleeps. In (2), the plural subject My cats agrees in number with the plural verb sleep.
It's trivial when the subject is a simple noun phrase. In (1) above, my cat is a noun phrase made up of the determiner my and the head noun cat.
It gets a bit tricky when you have a complex noun phrase as the subject:
(3) The park frequented by many residents is temporarily closed.
In sentence (3), the noun phrase is "The park frequented by many residents". The head noun park is modified by the clause "frequented by many residents".
Because of the intervening clause between the head noun and the verb, it's easy to forget what the real subject of the sentence is and mistake the noun residents for the subject, thus ending up with the grammatically wrong sentence below:
(4) *The park frequented by many residents are temporarily closed.
Sentence (4) is ungrammatical because the noun park is singular but the verb are is plural.
Let's go back to the sentence from the news story. The correct version is sentence (5) below:
(5) News of radiation leaks from one of Japan's nuclear plants has sparked off concerns among many netizens in Singapore.
The noun news is always singular and so takes the singular verb has.
As an exercise on subject-verb concord, try spot the mistake in each screengrab below:
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| ChannelNewsAsia - 18 November 2010 |
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| examenglish.com |
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| AsiaOne - 28 October 2010 |
Tuesday 3 April 2012
The reason why
Grammarians are divided over the use of why such as in the sentence below:
(1) The reason why he left was unknown.
Specifically, the debate centres on whether why is redundant after the phrase the reason.
(2) The reason he left was unknown.
Others argue that the word reason is a noun and does not mean why, a conjunction, and so there is no redundancy. This view is shared by Bryan A. Garner, who pointed out in Garner's Modern American Usage that the phrase the reason why is no more redundant than the time when or the place where.
So, which view do you subscribe to?
I favour the latter view that there is no redundancy in the reason why. Although why can be removed from sentence (1) without any loss in meaning, it does not necessarily follow that its inclusion makes the longer sentence incorrect. In fact, I would even argue that the more verbose the reason why is better than the reason by looking at where since both are conjunctions:
(3) The place where he visited was a tourist spot.
(4) The place he visited was a tourist spot.
Both sentences (3) and (4) are acceptable in English and convey roughly the same meaning. Neither is more correct than the other.
However, consider the next pair:
(5) The restaurant where we ate was horrible.
(6) The restaurant we ate was horrible.
The verbose where version makes the intended meaning of the restaurant as a place where the eating happened unambiguous. The minimalist version, on the other hand, can be misleading. Someone might think we ate the restaurant!
But the expression the reason why must be distinguished from the reason is because. The latter is an outright redundancy, since the word because means for the reason that.
(1) The reason why he left was unknown.
Specifically, the debate centres on whether why is redundant after the phrase the reason.
Redundancy is the use of unnecessary words or phrases that express something already said in the utterance or sentence. For example, the phrase in colour is redundant in My car is red in colour because red is a colour.
Some grammarians consider the use of why in the expression the reason why redundant and condemn its use. They argue that because both reason and why amount to the same meaning, the word why is unnecessary after the reason. Hence, they advocate the why-less version below:(2) The reason he left was unknown.
Others argue that the word reason is a noun and does not mean why, a conjunction, and so there is no redundancy. This view is shared by Bryan A. Garner, who pointed out in Garner's Modern American Usage that the phrase the reason why is no more redundant than the time when or the place where.
So, which view do you subscribe to?
I favour the latter view that there is no redundancy in the reason why. Although why can be removed from sentence (1) without any loss in meaning, it does not necessarily follow that its inclusion makes the longer sentence incorrect. In fact, I would even argue that the more verbose the reason why is better than the reason by looking at where since both are conjunctions:
(3) The place where he visited was a tourist spot.
(4) The place he visited was a tourist spot.
Both sentences (3) and (4) are acceptable in English and convey roughly the same meaning. Neither is more correct than the other.
However, consider the next pair:
(5) The restaurant where we ate was horrible.
(6) The restaurant we ate was horrible.
The verbose where version makes the intended meaning of the restaurant as a place where the eating happened unambiguous. The minimalist version, on the other hand, can be misleading. Someone might think we ate the restaurant!
But the expression the reason why must be distinguished from the reason is because. The latter is an outright redundancy, since the word because means for the reason that.
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