Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language

Ray wrote:
> English is also hesitant. This side of the Pond we tend treat collective
> nouns as plural while the American tend to use the singular. We would say
> "The committee are all agreed" the Americans, I believe, would say
> something like "the committee is entirely agreed".
Yes, generally. Though note that some dialects (e.g., mine) have
number attraction, whereby a plural noun in some kind of subordinate
relation (relative clause, prepositional adjunct, etc.) may trigger
plural number agreement even though the formal subject of the verb
is singular. This can in fact occur for me even with noncorporate
NPs.

Note, also, that, IIRC, on both sides of the pond we say "The
United States of America *is*"; certainly semantically and
morphologically plural, but it takes singular agreement.  (Although
they are united into one federation, they are still notionally
sovereign entities in many respects, and have far more autonomy
than any of the entities united into the United Kingdom, or
indeed in some ways of the European Union.)

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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