Re: USAGE: number concord in AmE, again

Tim May writes:
 > John Cowan writes:
 >  > Tim May scripsit:
 >  >
 >  > >  > "If England wins today, it will provide a great boost to the economy".
 >  > >
 >  > > There's nothing unusual about this.  "It" in this sentence refers to
 >  > > the fact of an England win, not to the team.
 >  >
 >  > Yes, but why isn't it "If England win today"?
 >  >
 > Oh... well, it could be, but I think the sense is of England as the
 > country, rather than the team.  Synecdoche, of a sort.  Nations are
 > always singular.

Although, that said, I don't think the semantic agreement's as
strongly enforced for teams as for, say, musical groups.  Of course,
most teams are named after nations, regions or cities, which are
always treated as singular, so you use synecdoche a lot, but I don't
find it totally ungrammatical to say "If team A wins" or "if the
first team wins" (although I find the latter worse than the former -
it's easier to use a singular construction if you're referring to the
team by name, even if that name doesn't refer to anything else).

Note that this only applies to verb conjugation.  I'd be very
reluctant to refer to a team as "it".