Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language

Ray Brown scripsit:

> 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".
In American English, nouns singular in form take singular agreement
only, without regard to their semantics.  The only exception is *some*
but not all pluralia tantum nouns (ones which do not have a syntactic
singular form): the news is, the scissors are, the pants are, e.g.

Statistics, mathematics, and so on take singular agreement, although
"statistics" meaning "more than one statistic" takes plural agreement.
Note that our abbreviation for "mathematics" is "math", which of course
takes singular agreement.

"I am a human being, not just a statistic!"
"True, you are not a statistic; you are a datum."

--
John Cowan        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan          jcowan@reutershealth.com
Please leave your values                Check your assumptions.  In fact,
   at the front desk.                      check your assumptions at the door.
     --sign in Paris hotel                   --Cordelia Vorkosigan