What’s the us(ag)e?

6. Subject and verb agreement: agreeing to disagree

Most of us would agree that agreeing is more agreeable than disagreeing, though some would disagree about what is agreeable and what is disagreeable. You just can’t please everyone, can you? Perhaps the best we can do is to agree to disagree (or maybe to disagree to agree? But that makes little sense, or does it?). The subject of the sentence and the verb of the same sentence should agree even if we do not, or even if we do.

What does it mean for the subject and verb to agree? Well, they should agree in number, meaning that if the subject of the sentence is singular then the verb should be singular. We can easily understand what it means that a subject is singular. There is only one subject. A plural subject is more than one. “Boy” is a singular subject while “boys” is a plural one. There is no problem with that. But what if the boys are on a team? Is team singular or plural? And does it matter if the team is from America or British?

What does it mean for a verb to be singular or plural? To explain the meaning of number as it applies to verbs is not so easy or obvious. Verbs are neither singular or plural, but they do change form depending on the subject. So we can call them singular or plural if we want to, and why not? Most verbs change form from singular to plural by removing the “s” to the end. That is a little confusing already., but “plays” becomes “play,” (as in “They play” compared to “He plays”), “He walks” and “They walk”, etc.

Unfortunately, the “etc.” masks a lot of irregularities: he is / they are; she has / they have; John marches; John and Jane march. But the situation with subject and verb agreement gets worse than the irregularities of verb forms, much worse.

The biggest problem with agreement is with the nature of the subject not the verb. The number of some subjects (as in the question I asked above about “team”) is difficult to determine. [And take a close look at the sentence I just wrote; we will return to it below.]

Is “team” plural or singular? What about “family,” “jury,” “herd,” “group,” and “committee”? These (and unfortunately there are others) are collective nouns, and it is not always easy to determine whether they are singular or plural. Of course, once you determine that, then the verb form is easy to determine. Compounding the problem is that what Americans consider to be a collective noun differs from what the British and other English speaking countries consider to be a collective noun. Perhaps this difference is political, that Americans have been indoctrinated to fear anything collective because it “smacks” of communism. Perhaps. But for whatever the reason, and even with the collapse of communism, we are stuck with this difference.

            Let me illustrate the nature of the problem. Look at this sentence:

The U.K. basketball team won the tournament.

            [And the “U. K.” is not an abbreviation of “United Kingdom”; it stands for the

“University of Kentucky.”]

This sentence is correct, and it may even be true. And oftentimes it is true, though, sadly, not always. The subject “team” agrees with the verb “won,” but since “won” is the past tense of “win” agreement is not a problem: he won / they won, the same verb form is used. But what about the present tense verbs? Here is the same sentence but in the present tense:  The U. K. basketball team wins the tournament.

The team wins the tournament.

This sounds correct, doesn’t it? So, the word “team” is singular; the sentence has the same verb as this one: John wins the tournament.

Singular – wins (he wins).

Plural – win (they win).

So the logic of this example tells us that “team” is a singular noun. How does the following sentence sound to you?

The team win the tournament.

This doesn’t sound quite right, does it? The word “team” must be singular since it doesn’t sound right if we say, “The boy win the tournament.”

How about this one?

The team of U. K. basketball players win the tournament.

This sounds okay, doesn’t it? But “team” is the subject of the sentence not “players.” Then the word “team” must be a plural noun. But aren’t the sentences essentially the same? Get rid of the prepositional phrase “of U. K. basketball players” and the sentences are exactly the same. But then we have this logical inconsistency: the word “team” is both singular and plural. Is logic important? Whether or not you think that logic is important, the question of whether or not logic is important is important. But it’s not an importance that I can investigate at this time. Later, though, I promise, logic and its relationship to language will be examined. But for now, to consider the difficulties with collective nouns, try this example:

We say, “The team wins the game.”  Now, ask a question about whether or not the team won the game.

Here it is again.

The example: The team wins the game.

The question: The team wins the game, don’t they?

This also sounds right, but “they” is plural so “team” must also be plural, which would mean we should write “The team win the game, don’t they?” [As in, “They win the game, don’t they?”]

Now we could say, “The team wins the game, doesn’t it?”

But we usually don’t say it this way. It sounds odd for a couple reasons. One is that the “it” seems to refer to “game” since it is the nearest noun, but that’s another issue altogether. The main reason for the “oddness” is that we think of “team” as a group, but we refer to it as a single entity.  So, what’s the solution to this seemingly logical problem?

            Words such as “team,” “family,” “committee,” etc. are usually treated as singular unless the plural nature of the word is indicated by specifying the numbers that make up the group. We say, “Our family is united.” And we also say, “Our family of crazy individualists are seldom united.” Another example: The committee is still at work, the committee of teenage boys and girls are still at work.

The key to what we say is the sound of the words. The closeness of the subject to the verb determines usage. In the “family” example, “individualists” is closer to the verb than “family,” so we use the plural form “are” instead of “is.” Isn’t this simple now? No. I’m afraid it’s not.

Look at this sentence:

The pile of orange and black masks were thrown away by mistake.

This sentence is incorrectly written. Since “pile” is the subject, the correct verb is “was” not “were.” The pile of orange and black masks was thrown away by mistake.

[The pile was thrown away. What difference does the color make, and what difference does the composition of the pile make? No difference.]

So, what is to be done?

I think I should let you in on a not-so-secret secret: logic and language do not mix well, certainly not perfectly. Logically, there should not be collective nouns. Shouldn’t every noun refer to either one individual or more than one, be either singular or plural? That should be so if there was a perfect fit with logic and language. But there isn’t, and there shouldn’t be. Logic is a language, but language isn’t logic.

All we need be aware of is that there is this group (or is it: “there are this group”?) of nouns that we usually consider to be singular, but sometimes we can consider them to be plural. We use the singular form, but if we attach a prepositional phrase indicating the individuals that make up the collective noun (as in a team of players), then we use the plural form. And sometimes we stay up all night wondering why language is not logic. Well, some people might. Others might just sleep and dream pure thoughts in spite of the seemingly illogical uses of language that we encounter every day.

After all, the U. K. team wins all of the time, don’t they?  Believing such a statement is neither logical nor illogical. It’s ridiculous. No team is capable of winning all of the time (except maybe Duke).

Return to the Usage Table of Contents