Re: USAGE: number concord in AmE, again

Quoting Andrew Smith <andrew.smith20@...>:

> On Thu, 20 Jun 2002 22:44:53 +0100, And Rosta <a-rosta@...> wrote:
>
> >Since several people insisted to me in a recent discussion
> >on this list that in AmE verb agreement is determined
> >purely by syntactic number, I was struck by the following,
> >said by the senator from Nevada near the start of The
> >Godfather part II: "the Sierra Boys' Choir, who have
> >chosen a special song". Is this because animacy overrides
> >number concord, so that "who have" is preferable to
> >"which has"?
> >
> >--And.
>
> As an aside to this, even though we came to the conclusion that agreement
> was syntactic in the US and semantic in Britain, I heard a Scottish woman
> on the radio this morning saying:
>
> "If England wins today, it will provide a great boost to the economy".
>
> Presumably the economy will now unfortunately remain boostless.
Does anyone know if syntactic agreement is also characteristic of
Scottish English? Many North American dialects -- especially those
in the Southern and Mid-Atlantic States in the US -- were originally
settled by Scots and Scotch-Irish.  What's the situation in the
traditional dialects of the north of England?

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