[etni] Re: Fw: Tamar's question

I'm not in ETNI--my wife is the ETNI'er in our home.  But if this helps from 
reading American and British sports pages, an American team goes, but a 
British team go.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ask Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
To: "Etni" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 4:26 PM
Subject: [etni] Fw: Tamar's question


>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: sbshai - sbshai@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Tamar's question
>
>
> I've inadvertently deleted the relevant ETNI digest, but I recall that
> Tamar's question concerned the issue of collective nouns; in the example 
> she
> gave, the word "class" is a collective noun -- that is, though it's 
> singular
> in form, it includes more than one person.  (Another common example is the
> noun 'family'.)
>
> Tamar's answer to her student was correct -- i.e., we say "Does the class 
> go
> on trips?" rather than "Do..." because a singular noun { we're talking 
> about
> a class, not classes!} must take a singular verb.  Moreover, in this
> sentence it is clear that we're referring to the class as a single entity
> and that we are speaking about the action of the majority of the group; it
> doesn't matter whether a few individual members are excluded from the
> question because it's known they never go on trips.
>
> Hope that helps!
> Batya
>
>
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