Collective nouns

Most collective nouns pass all the tests of countability: they allow countable quantifiers and
determiners, and in the sense of ‘body/group’ vs. ‘several bodies/groups’, they allow the
plural marker –s and thus plural agreement and plural anaphoric pronouns.

(1)
a. A coalition government is now going be established.
b. Governments in all countries are trying to control the financial crisis.

Agreement patterns

1. a verb in the singular is used when the group is thought of as a unit

2. a verb in the plural is used when the speaker or writer focuses on the individual members
that make up the group.

A distinction is drawn between singular, which is triggered by grammatical concord, and

plural, which is motivated by notional concord. The former involves agreement with the
syntactic form of the subject, whereas the latter involves agreement with its meaning.

(2)
a. The committee has decided that it will postpone its decision – collective reading
b. The committee have decided that they will postpone their decision – distributive reading

(3)
a. Her family has disgraced itself (collective reading)
b. The family still resolve to hold up their heads (distributive reading)

Agreement is also displayed in relative pronouns:

which + singular verb (i.e. on the collective interpretation)

who + plural verb (on the distributive interpretation).
That is also consistently used with singular verbs. Jacobsson (1970:355) and Zandvoort
(1975:162) argue that which is used when the group is in focus and who when the individuals
making up the group are in focus.

Collective nouns preceded by determiners and numerals associated with singular forms
(e.g. a, one, every, each, this and that) are generally used with singular verbs (Strang
1969:107). Consider the examples in (4):

(4)
Not that every married couple is happy [....] (FLOB B07) 1
The deal is another example of a company that stubs its toe [....] (Frown A36)
They kept the pace fast with many digressions, a sensible tactic to keep the attention of an
audience who has not been interested enough in cooking to try it before. (FLOB C04)

(5) This Government are dedicated to a sustainable, economic recovery based on stable, low
inflation. (FLOB H15)

Agreement with the verb in the plural is the norm with the noun government in British
‘officialese’ (Fries 1981). This usage stands in marked contrast to AmE ‘officialese’ which
uses a singular concord with collective nouns (Hornoiu 2009). “Plural concord is used with
the British government and singular concord with foreign governments” (Bauer 1994:64).

(6) (.....) the Government of Denmark is applying the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade in respect of Greenland. (LOB H14)

Mixed concord/discord
- sg. verb + pl. pronoun
(7)
The group meets once a week. They are advised by members of the Art Department.

The example in (8) indicates a divergence between verbal and pronominal concord and
illustrate what has been referred to as mixed concord or discord, i.e. the combination of a
1
Brown stands for the Brown corpus and LOB for the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen corpus. LOB and Brown contain,
respectively, BrE and AmE texts sampled in 1961.FLOB and Frown stand for Freiburg updates of LOB and
Brown respectively. The sampling year for FLOB is 1991 and for Frown 1992.
singular verb and a plural pronoun. Discord “typically occurs where there is considerable
distance between co-referent noun phrases; discord is generally motivated by notional
considerations, i.e. tendency towards agreement with the meaning, rather than the form, of
the subject noun phrase” (Biber et al. 1999:192).

(8) The British Travel Association, which does excellent work in taking care of all foreigners
who want to have a good time here and study what is pompously called ‘The British Way of
Life’, have a hard time on their hands. (LOB B05)

Mixed concord or discord shows a fairly complex interaction of regional, stylistic and inter-
linguistic variation. The following tendencies have been identified:

 Mixed concord is slightly more common in AmE than in BrE, AusE and NZE.
 Mixed concord is more often used in informal and spoken language than in formal,
written language (cf. Levin 2001, Biber et al. 1999)
 Some collective nouns are more likely to yield mixed concord than others (e.g.
family and team vs. government and committee).

Nouns like audience, board, committee, government, jury and public favour the singular; staff
is given as a noun that prefers plural concord. Nouns that show variation in taking both
singular and plural concord are crew and family.

The group of truly variable collective nouns is considerably larger. Nixon (1979:120) argues
that for the following collective nouns, which he refers to as “corporate” nouns, all types of
singular, plural and mixed concord were recorded:2

army, association, audience, board, cast, clan, class, club, college, commission,
committee, company, corporation, council, couple, crew, crowd, department, family,
federation, gang, generation, government, group, institute, majority, minority, ministry,
minority, opposition, party, population, staff, team, and university

2
Nixon (1972:120) argues that “the possibility of plural verbal concord exists only with those words denoting a
collection of living individuals”. This observation is illustrated by the following two sentences: The fleet is in
the harbour (i.e. a number of ships) vs. The fleet are in town (i.e. a number of sailors).
Regional variation

- singular concord is most frequently used in AmE;

- plural concord, on the other hand, is used most frequently in BrE
- varieties like AusE and NZE take an intermediate position (Hundt 1998: 83; Levin 2001:60-
70).

“From a sociolinguistic point of view, the preference for the singular may reflect the pecking
order among the different varieties of English: American English [......] is beginning to set the
norm for British English”
(Depraetere 2003:112-13)

Stylistic variation

The general tendency in all varieties of English is that singular concord is preferred in more
formal styles (with the exception of BrE officialese; cf. Fries 1981 and Hundt 1998), whereas
plural concord is on the increase in more informal styles, such as sports reportage or informal
conversation (Levin 2001).
Conclusion
In present-day AmE and BrE there seems to be a tendency towards a more frequent use of
singular forms. Evidence from the second half of the twentieth century, however, shows that
AmE is currently leading world English in a change towards a more frequent use of singular
concord.
Although British English does favour singular forms, it has not been influenced by
American English. The development within British English must have taken place
independently, because singular forms were increasingly used in British English in the 1930s,
a time when influence from American English through mass media and increased global
mobility was less widespread than it is today (Bauer 1994: 61-66).