I REFER to the following sentence from Paul Chan for MOE on Jan 6: “We have a series of six articles that give a good description of the heritage building.” I noted your explanation that a plural verb should be used as the plural noun is seen to be a more important antecedent than the main noun (“series”) of the noun phrase.

However, could you please explain why a singular verb is used after the relative pronoun “that” in the following statement/sentence on page 1273 of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (7th edition) for the word “regiment”: “A large group of soldiers that IS commanded by a colonel.”

Is it because the main noun “group” is seen to be more important than the plural noun “soldiers”? If your answer is “yes”, then can I say that the statement/sentence is also correct if a plural verb is used as I can always argue that the plural noun “soldiers” is more important than the main noun “group”? – Ee Na

I read your explanation on “Collective Nouns” (Jan 27), in response to your Jan 6 explanation on my query on “Problem Pronoun”. I am trying to understand the application of grammatical rules with “subject-verb agreement” as opposed to “use of pronouns in subordinate clause”. Would the following grammatical rules help to further clarify the phrase in question?

“A herd of cows that belong to the farmer are grazing in his field” (where “is/are grazing” is the contention).

The argument here is really on the grammatical rule of subject-verb agreement, where all verbs in a clause agree with the main noun. E.g. A herd of cows is grazing in his field (where the main noun is “herd”).

But when the pronoun “that” is used, grammar rules that the subordinate clause (and all verbs in it) always refer to the immediate antecedent noun which is “cows” and not “herd” (main noun). Thus we use “belong” instead of “belongs” and “are grazing” instead of “is grazing”.

For comparison:

1. A herd of cows which have contracted the disease have been culled (“cows” is the antecedent of “which” and all verbs after this refer to cows).

2. A herd of cows with the disease has been culled. (There is no pronoun here and all verbs here refer to the main noun “herd”.)

So the use of singular or plural verbs is really not dependent on “Collective Nouns” but rather on grammatical rules concerning subject-verb agreement or the use of the pronoun “that” or “which”. Are my grammatical rules applied correctly in identifying which nouns qualify singular or plural verbs? My English teacher taught me to always stand firm by grammatical rules. Please help. – Paul Chan

I am going to answer Paul Chan’s and Ee Na’s questions together, since they were raised partly or wholly from my answer to Paul’s original question in MOE on Jan 6.

Having re-read Paul’s original question and my answer to it, as well as thought and read more deeply about the matters raised, I have come to the conclusion that the relevant point to consider in such sentences is NOT whether the verb should agree with the main noun or antecedent noun, but whether a collective noun in a partitive structure should use a singular or a plural verb.

Paul’s sentence, which Ee Na later refers to, contains such a collective noun, i.e. “series”. When it is in a “partitive structure”, it just means that it is linked by “of” to a plural noun (or noun phrase) or a plural pronoun. Let me write the sentence in full and bold the collective noun + of + plural noun phrase (i.e. “six articles”) in it:

“We have a series of six articles that give a good description of the heritage building.”

This sentence has, in addition, a relative clause introduced by the relative pronoun “that”.

Let me then quote part of my answer to Lee (MOE, Jan 27) on collective nouns:

“In British English, either a singular or a plural verb can be used with a collective noun .... Generally, in using a collective noun, when the group is seen as a unit or impersonally, a singular verb is used. But when the group is seen as a collection of individuals, a plural verb is used.”

My statements are based on information found in the following books:

Collins Cobuild English Grammar (2nd ed 2005), 1.49 (p16)

Michael Swan, Practical English Usage (3rd ed 2005), 526.1 (p519) and 526.2 (p520)

Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk, A Student’s Grammar Of The English Language (1990, revd. 1999), 10.21 (p216)

Fowler’s Modern English Usage (revised 3rd ed with title change, by R.W. Burchfield 2004,

p157-8, under the entry collective noun)

The above principle also applies to a collective noun in a partitive structure, including one that is followed by a relative pronoun in a relative clause, as in Paul’s sentence. In that connection, let me quote Burchfield in the book mentioned above:

“4. When a collective noun is followed by of + a plural noun or pronoun, the choice between a singular and plural verb remains open, but in practice a plural verb is somewhat more common, e.g. the current crop of bestsellers include a number of monuments to bad taste – The Face, 1987.” (p158)

To address Ee Na’s questions in her last paragraph, there is an element of subjectivity in trying to decide whether in a particular partitive structure, the group is seen as an impersonal unit, or as a collection of individuals. For example, Ee Na pointed out that the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (7th edition) uses “that is” after “a group of soldiers” in its definition of “regiment”:

“A large group of soldiers that IS commanded by a colonel”

However, the online Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English uses “that are” after “a large group of soldiers” in its definition of “the Black Watch”:

“An unofficial name for the Royal Highland Regiment, a large group of soldiers that ARE part of the British Army and are based in Scotland”

Obviously, the OALD thinks of a “group of soldiers” in a regiment as an impersonal unit (it could be any group in any regiment), while the LDOC thinks of a “large group of soldiers” in the Black Watch (or Royal Highland Regiment) as a collection of individuals (those that belong only to this particular regiment).

On the question of a relative pronoun used after a collective noun in a partitive structure, raised by Paul, the presence of the relative pronoun does not decide whether a singular or a plural verb is used in the relative clause. What decides it is what I have written above, i.e. whether the group, e.g. “a herd of cows” is seen in the sentence as an impersonal unit or as a collection of individual cows.

I discussed this particular phrase in my answer to Lee (MOE, Jan 27) and gave some examples of actual usage.

I hope I have answered your question, Paul.

• Survey: Britons love tea more than coffee
• New York City relies on automation technologies to face challenges of urbanisation
• Oil palm firms team up with Sabah to protect Malua Forest Reserve
• Powering the Big Apple
• Build robust cities
• Fun with words
• Rail marvel in New York
• Fun with synonyms
• Carnegie Hall gets green facelift
• Win The Good Food Cook Book!

Latest Jobs from Star-Jobs