What’s the us(ag)e?

 7. Collective nouns and subject-verb agreement

I’ve already mentioned this problem, but I’ll go into it a bit more detail since this proximity or closeness issue is the source of much confusion with language and life. I’m not going to deal with life, but we all know about how closeness is a comfort and also causes problems, and both the comfort and the problems are more interesting the agreement or the disagreement of subjects with verbs.

The Standard ENglish SentencE (SENSE) is one that has a subject, a verb, and an object (or object phrase). And it makes sense to us since it is so familiar. Here is an example: Mary throws the ball. (Mary – subject) (throws – verb) (the ball – object)

Having Mary throw the ball over the fence doesn’t change this basic form:

Mary (subject) throws (verb) the ball over the fence (object phrase: object plus prepositional phrase).

When we deviate from the norm (as we must: contrary to the moral police, deviation is common), we can run into agreement problems.

We have compound subjects.

Mary throws the ball. (she throws)

Mary and Sally throw the ball. (they throw)

But what if neither is involved in throwing the ball?

Neither Mary nor her friend Sally throws (or throw?) the ball over the fence.

The correct form is:

Neither Mary nor her friend Sally throws the ball over the fence.

Since “neither” signifies a singular, the correct form is “throws.” (she throws)

“Neither / nor” and “either / or” signal one of two, not two.

But what if Mary has several friends and none of them can throw the ball over the fence?

Neither Mary nor her friends throw the ball over the fence.

Now we use “throw” instead of “throws” as we did before with prepositional phrases.

Why?

It is the closeness of the pair to the verb that determines the form. Since “friends” is closer to the verb, we use “throw” instead of “throws.”

Is this logical? No. Closeness is more important than logic. [You might ask, “Are we talking about same sex marriages here?” The answer is, “No. Why would you ask such a question?” My answer is “Because I must. The connection between language and logic, between using language based on how close one word is to another is important. But more of that later.”]

It’s not logical because if you turn the subject pair around, you use a different verb form even though the subject still has the same members.

Neither her friends nor Mary throws the ball over the fence.

Again, logic is not the most reliable guide to usage. Language is a human construct. How many people do you know who are logical at all let alone logical all of the time?  But the most important questions might be these:

How high is that fence that neither Mary nor any of her friends could throw the ball over it? Or how heavy is the ball? Or how weak are Mary and her friends?

Answer: Mary! Get thyself to the gym.

Return to Usage Table of Contents