[etni] Re: Fw: The Police is or the Police are?

Interestingly enough, in Britain sports teams are always referred to in the
plural whereas in America, they are considered singular, for example in
British newspapers they would write "Tottenham Hotspur are the greatest team
around" as opposed to "is the greatest team around."
Because of this it always annoys me to read English football reports in
American papers or the Jerusalem Post which about 20 years ago adopted
American "English" instead of the more refined British version. 

David

-----Original Message-----
From: etni-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:etni-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Ask
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 10:16 AM
To: Etni
Subject: [etni] Fw: The Police is or the Police are?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: zakheim - zakheim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: The Police is or the Police are?

Dear Adi,

'The Police' is a collective noun, and it belongs to the sub-class of 
Unique Collectives like for example: the Vatican, the Kremlin, (the) 
Congress, (the) Parliament etc. In British English plural subject-verb 
agreement occurs much more frequently ('A Practical English Grammar' by 
Thomson and Martinet, Fourth Edition, Oxford University Press 2003, p. 26). 
American speakers however favor the singular form ('The Grammar Book' by 
Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman, Second Edition, Heinle & Heinle 
Publishers, Copyright 1999, p. 329). In both dialects, however, speakers can

choose to interpret the noun as a whole unit or as the individual members or

components that compose the unit. The duality of number is also observable 
in other anaphoric forms, such as reflexive pronouns, possesive determiners 
and relative pronouns: itself/themselves, its/their, is/are, was/were etc.

Yours,

Relli Zakheim

 


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