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

I asked:
> > Are any of the following okay?
> >
> > 1a. My family were arguing with each other.
> > 1b. My family was arguing with each other.
> >
> > 2a. My family were behaving themselves.
> > 2b. My family was behaving themselves.
> > 2c. My family was behaving itself.
Thanks to the several people who responded. The responses served
to convince me that number concord truly is syntactically
determined in N. American English, and hence that this is a
major national dialect difference in grammar, not just in
usage (sources such as the Greenbaum & Quirk that Tim cited
cannot be trusted to make such a distinction). Indeed, it would
be the most major grammatical difference, i think.

--And.