2019-2020 – English: Grammar and Proficiency – Uantwerpen – BA2 - Semester 1 – Anna Gagiano
Summary: Practical grammar reference from BBC Learning English – Subject-Verb Agreement
Verbs always agree with the subject noun in a sentence
Many types of noun and noun phrase Difficult to know if a particular noun takes a SG or PL verb
1. When SG and PLR are the same
Species, economics, sheep, politics, headquarters, series, fish (which has an alternative PL: fishes)
They do not change form to show a plural. Be careful whether you are taking in the SG or PL
meaning and change the verb accordingly.
2. Nouns with no PL
News; school subjects such as mathematics, gymnastics, physics; games such as dominos, darts; the
disease measles
PL countable noun: + s
Uncountable nouns do not have a PL and always use a SG verb. Watch out for uncountable
nouns that end in ‘s’
3. Nouns with no SG
The police, staff, congratulations, cattle, thanks, fishes (an alternative PL which means the different
species of fish which are in the same place)
Collective nouns represent a group or number of objects together. These nouns are in many
cases considered to be PL all the time since they are collections of single pieces kept together.
They take a PL verb and have no SG noun form.
Glasses, scissors, tweezers, trousers, headphones, tights, jeans
Pair nouns: nouns where two things are joined together
The British, the rich, the sick
We can combine the definite article the with an adjective to create a group noun meaning ‘all
of…’. This is common for nationalities. They take a PL verb.
4. Collective nouns with both SG and PL
The government, family, crew, team, public, jury, committee
A collective noun represents a group of people, like police. But unlike police, which is always PL,
the choice of SG or PL verb depends on whether you consider the noun to be a group of
individuals or a single unit.
In a relative clause, we use who for the group and which for the unit.
5. Quantities & amounts, portions and mathematics
3 minutes, £100, 24 hours, 26 miles
Despite the facts that e.g. 3 is a PL number and minutes is a PL noun, the sentence uses a SG
verb. This is because, within the context, three minutes is considered to be one unit of time.
This is true for amounts, distances, periods of time, quantities, weights, sums of money…
Consider the difference:
There are 60 minutes in an hour. Counting the number of individual minutes
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