USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: irregular English plurals (was: RE:

And Rosta scripsit:

> As you probably realized after sending that message, analysing these
> putative bare plurals as mass singulars runs into difficulties with
> "The lion are scarce today", etc.
Ungrammatical for me.

> You cannot even resort to treating them as analogous to collectives
> like "The team have been playing well", because whereas "team" is
> singular but triggering plural agreement
Not for Merkins: "The team has been playing well" is the only thing
that works.  Fowler wanted us to say "The jury is agreed" but "The
jury are disagreed", but I think no one follows him in this.

> "These lion were tracked down yesterday".
I still can't swallow it.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

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