Re: USAGE: number concord in AmE, again

Andrew Smith writes:
 > 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.
 >
 > Andrew

There's nothing unusual about this.  "It" in this sentence refers to
the fact of an England win, not to the team.

Reply