Re: USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: irregular English plurals (was: RE:
| From: | Andrew Smith <andrew.smith20@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, May 25, 2002, 11:37 |
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On Fri, 24 May 2002 19:52:56 +0100, And Rosta <a-rosta@...> wrote:
>Nik:
>> I can't speak for John, but for me "the team are" is as ungrammatical as
>> "the man are"
>
>And Tom Wier & John Cowan, like good North Americans, concur.
>
>--And.
As a good Brit, of course "Manchester United is" sounds terrible, and a
plural agreement is obligatory.
As for your examples,
>Are any of the following okay?
>
>1a. My family were arguing with each other.
That's fine.
>1b. My family was arguing with each other.
Hmmm, a little odd.
>
>2a. My family were behaving themselves.
Yes, fine.
>2b. My family was behaving themselves.
No, that's not acceptable. Strangely, I think this is worse than with "each
other" and a singular verb, though I don't know why.
>2c. My family was behaving itself.
It's not quite ungrammatical, but it certainly sounds somewhat pompous and
hypercorrect. Rather like someone insisting on using "one die" instead of
the common "one dice, two dice" [Apologies if you do use die naturally as
the singular of dice, you never know]
Andrew Smith
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