Concords

Definition of Concords

Concord is the agreement- especially in number- bet

ween the subject and verb of a sentence such that w
hen the subject is singular, the verb will also be singul
ar and when the subject is plural, the verb will also b
e plural.
 TYPES OF CONCORD

Grammatical concord– the principle of grammatical concord

holds with nouns that are grammatically marked for plural. It
is the easiest type of concord. Simply put, the rule says, if th
e subject is singular, the verb will also be singular and if the s
ubject is plural, the verb will also be plural.
 Examples of Grammatical Con
cords
The boy is here, The boys are here, The man likes food, T
he men like food.
 Types of concord

Proximity concord-—- Proximity means “nearness”. The princi

ple of proximity concord says that if two or more subjects are
coordinated (joined) by the correlative coordinators “either…
…. or” or “neither…..nor”, the subject that is closest to the ver
b determines the concord- the rest (first one (s)) are ignored.
 Examples Of Proximity Conco
rds
If Sandra fails her exams, either her parents, her friends or h
er sister is to blame.
 Types Of Concord

Notional Concord. The principle of notional concord holds wi

th collective nouns. Collective nouns are words like “committ
ee”, “club”, “choir”, “audience”, “congregation” etc. These wo
rds mean a group of people, and they can take either singula
r or plural verbs depending on how they are used. The rule is
that, if the collective noun performs an action, it takes a plur
al verb, but if no action is involved, it takes a singular verb.
 Examples of Notional Concor
ds
The choir sing very well (not sings, since an action is involved
, the verb will be plural), The Choir is very disciplined (not ar
e), The audience is quite large (not are), The audience were c
lapping their hands (not is)
 Types OF Concords

Categorization concord. There are adjectives that denote a group

or category of people. Such words include The poor, the rich, the
lame, the blind, the helpless, etc.When these words are used as t
he subject of a sentence, two things happen. The first is that thes
e words are not pluralized, though they mean a group of people
(the poor means everybody that is poor, so does the rich, the lam
e, the blind etc). So we do not have the forms( the poors,) (the bli
nds) among others..Secondly, they take plural verbs.
 Examples Of Categorization
Concords
The poor need our help (not needs), The rich also cry (not
cries), The blind see with their inner eyes (not sees) etc.
 Types of Concords

Concord of indefinite pronouns. Indefinite pronouns are tho

se pronouns that end in “body”, “thing” and “one”. They incl
ude the words somebody, everybody, nobody, anybody, som
ething, everything, nothings, anything etc. They have a plura
l connotation, but they take singular verbs.
 Examples Of Indefinite pron
ouns
Everybody in this class is hungry (not are), Nobody likes to
be disrespected (not like), Anything is better than nothing
(not are).