Dialectal Variation in Number Agreement with Collective Nouns in English
Ingrid Rodrick Beiler and Cynthia Hatch
Structure of English
Prof. Baron
Introduction
As ESL or EFL teachers, we are responsible for conveying normative rules of English
language usage. However, our conceptualization of standard English is often unconsciously
limited by our own dialect. This limited view can present problems when working with students
who either have learned English or will need to use English in dialectal contexts different from
our own. In the former case, we might misguidedly correct students who are correctly applying
the principles of an English dialect different from our own. In the latter case, we might fail to
equip students to use English according to native-speaker norms important to their success in
different dialectal contexts. An understanding of dialectal variations within English is thus
important in roles of authority over language use, such as teaching.
Number agreement with collective nouns provides an interesting case study in variation
among standard dialects of English. Because it is a case of syntactic variation, the subject will
likely be less familiar to ESL/EFL teachers than the more easily discerned dialectal differences
in pronunciation and vocabulary. This paper will limit itself to standard dialects, since these are
the dialects whose mastery is normally most relevant to English language learners’ goals. Due to
space limitations, we will focus on British (BrE) and American (AmE) English.
Collective nouns (e.g. government, team, or couple) are generally defined by both
morphosyntactic and semantic constraints. Depraetere (2003) relays the following traditional
definition: collective nouns are “nouns with multiple reference [that] are singular in form
but…can combine with a plural verb” (p. 85). Levin (2001) similarly suggests that “[t]he
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denotation of a collective noun involves at least two discrete entities. Moreover, a collective
noun controller can occur with singular as well as plural targets” (p. 18). The second part of
these definitions is problematic because many nouns considered collectives based on
morphological (singular form) and semantic (multiple reference) features, such as family and
crowd, strongly tend toward singular verb agreement in one dialect (AmE) and plural verb
agreement in another (BrE) (Levin, 2001). Levin resolves this difficulty by suggesting that some
words may be considered collectives in some dialects but not in others. However, Depraetere
dispenses with the criterion of plural agreement in the case of verb agreement in light of her
findings: “we can say that actual concord behaviour will be revealed to be such that the
requirement of compatibility with a plural verb cannot be considered as a necessary
characteristic of a collective noun” (p. 94). She suggests that it is more useful to consider plural
agreement as a prototypical rather than a necessary parameter. This resolution seems to accord
better with the fact that some collectives vary in their agreement patterns across dialects, yet still
maintain multiple reference and singular form in both of the dialects. Finally, drawing on
Persson’s (1989) concept of mobility, whereby a necessary characteristic of collective nouns is
the ability of its members to move, Depraetere suggests animacy as a semantic constraint of
collectives, thus excluding words such as forest or heap.
Levin (2001) defines agreement as follows: “Agreement is the matching of at least one
syntactic and/or semantic feature of one linguistic unit, the controller, on another, the target, so
that there is a systematic covariance between a syntactic and/or semantic feature of the controller
and a syntactic feature of the target” (p. 21). This paper will investigate patterns of number
agreement, marked for collectives on the verbs for which they serve as subjects and the pronouns
for which they serve as antecedents, as they vary across BrE and AmE.
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Methodology
This paper draws on material from seven written and spoken corpora that form the basis
of studies by Levin (2001), Bock et al. (2006), and Depraetere (2003). Written English is
sampled from two American newspapers, the New York Times (NYT) and the Wall Street
Journal (WSJ); a British newspaper, The Independent (Ind); the British National Corpus (BNC);
and the British English sections of the Collins Cobuild Corpus (CCC). Spoken English is
sampled from the Longman Spoken American Corpus (LSAC), the British National Corpus
(BNC), and Bock et al.’s (2006) experiments with British and American students.
We narrowed the scope of the data based on two criteria. We chose not to make specific
observations on collectives that were absent from (1) two of the three studies or (2) one of the
dialects in question, i.e., AmE or BrE. As a result, our investigation focused on nineteen
collective nouns: army, association, audience, clergy, commission, committee, company, council,
couple, crew, crowd, department, family, government, group, party, public, staff, and team.
A challenge in comparing studies was the different organizations of data on agreement
patterns among the three studies. Bock et al. (2006) tracked three agreement targets (tag
pronouns, reflexive pronouns, and verbs), while Levin (2001) tracked three different agreement
targets (verbs, relative pronouns, and personal pronouns). Since relative pronouns are not
explicitly marked for number, we excluded Levin’s (2001) data on relative pronoun concord.
Depraetere (2003) focused only on collective agreement with verbs in written BrE. Thus, special
effort is made to state the targets on which each study’s findings are based.
Number Agreement Patterns
The traditional view holds that number agreement with collective nouns varies between
the two dialects of English in discrete and predictable ways, AmE preferring singular agreement
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and BrE preferring plural. Quirk et al. (1985) state, “AmE generally treats singular collective
nouns as singular” (pp. 758–759). Hundt (2006) adds, “Currently, AmE is more advanced in the
use of singular concord than various other inner-circle varieties…plural concord is used most
frequently in BrE” (p. 209). Algeo (1988) further claims that BrE displays “a strong preference”
for plural verbs with collectives (p. 21).
However, the medium in which the collective occurs appears to influence whether
singular or plural is used in each dialect. Generally, plural agreement occurs more often in
speech of both dialects, whereas writing features higher rates of singular agreement. Quirk et al.
(1985) state: “on the whole, the plural is more popular in speech, whereas in the more inhibited
medium of writing the singular is probably preferred” (p. 758). Lock (1996) adds, “In formal
American English, particularly written English, the use of plural pronouns and plural finites with
such nouns is generally avoided” (p. 25). Levin (2001) concurs: “Spontaneously produced AmE
speech appears to contain high proportions of plural agreement with relative and personal
pronouns, whereas more formal AmE preserves low proportions of plural agreement…Verbs, on
the other hand, very rarely take plural agreement in AmE” (p. 76).
Singular Verb Agreement
AmE has an almost uniform rate of singular agreement at 97 percent in writing and 91
percent in speech (Levin, 2001). Specifically, rates of singular agreement between written and
spoken AmE varied 4 percentage points or less in twelve of nineteen collective nouns
highlighted in this paper, as illustrated in Table 1. Outliers to this trend varied widely in their
percentages of agreement difference, though no difference exceeded 37 percentage points
(Levin, 2001, pp. 165–169).
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Table 1: Singular Verb Agreement with Collective Nouns in AmE and BrE
Collective Noun
army
association
audience
clergy
commission
committee
company
council
couple
crew
crowd
department
family
government
group
party
public
staff
team
Written
AmE
100%
100%
99%
37%
99%
100%
100%
99%
17%
100%
98%
100%
96%
100%
91%
100%
100%
98%
99%
Spoken
AmE
100%
100%
89%
0%
100%
96%
96%
100%
60%
100%
100%
100%
95%
96%
83%
100%
67%
85%
89%
Written BrE
Spoken BrE
79%
79%
90%
50%
89%
61%
0%
0%
97%
70%
91%
74%
98%
85%
95%
71%
16%
5%
45%
38%
60%
56%
100%
84%
63%
57%
95%
82%
79%
60%
98%
84%
62%
28%
3%
4%
63%
63%
Adapted from Levin (2001) pp. 165–169.
BrE differs from AmE in two ways: The rate of singular agreement in both spoken and
written BrE is considerably lower than in AmE, and BrE contains a greater internal variance of
agreement between writing and speech. Levin’s (2001) results indicate a marked difference
between the two dialects in rates of singular agreement in writing and speech of more than 20
percent. In BrE, the overall rate of singular agreement in writing is 77 percent, and in speech it is
68 percent compared with AmE’s overall rate in writing at 97 percent and in speech at 91 percent
(pp. 76-77). Additionally, Levin (2001) reports that the variance between writing and speech
within BrE is higher than within AmE. In BrE the rate of singular agreement varies by 9 percent,
while in AmE the rate of singular agreement between written and spoken English varies by 6
percent (pp. 76-77). With respect to the collectives targeted in this paper, in BrE the percentage
of variation between written and spoken English, was 15 percent or more for eight of the
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nineteen collective nouns studied, as illustrated in Table 1. The greatest variance between written
and spoken BrE occurred for association at 40 percent (pp. 165–169).
Depraetere’s (2003) findings on agreement with singular verbs in BrE are difficult to
compare to Levin’s (2001), due to the different organization of data. Of the forty-three
collectives studied by Depraetere (2003), she classified 19 percent as only taking singular
agreement, with the majority of collectives in her study classified as verb-number-variable. Thus,
in BrE, Depraetere (2003) found that the majority of collective nouns can agree with singular or
plural verbs, with most verb-number-variable collectives in her study showing a strong
preference for singular verbs.
Singular Pronoun Agreement
The patterns for singular pronoun agreement differ from singular verb agreement in
written and spoken AmE and BrE. As indicated in Table 2 below, in writing, the variation of
singular pronoun agreement between dialects is similar to that for singular verb agreement, at 24
percent (AmE 68% vs. BrE 44%) (Levin, 2001, p. 165–169). However, in speech, the dialectal
variation is much larger, and in contrast to patterns for singular verb agreement, BrE prefers
singular pronoun agreement more often than AmE. In spoken BrE, agreement with singular
personal pronouns occurred in an average of 28 percent of cases, much greater than AmE at 6
percent (Levin, 2001). In particular, singular agreement in spoken English occurred more
frequently (between 33% and 7%) in BrE than in AmE (pp. 165–169).
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Table 2: Singular Pronoun Agreement with Collective Nouns in AmE and BrE
Collective Noun
army
association
audience
clergy
commission
committee
company
council
couple
crew
crowd
department
family
government
group
party
public
staff
team
Written AmE
78%
92%
36%
25%
96%
90%
89%
86%
0%
36%
39%
89%
27%
90%
54%
92%
43%
34%
67%
Spoken AmE
Written BrE
Spoken BrE
0%
48%
17%
50%
56%
33%
0%
15%
4%
0%
0%
0%
0%
92%
17%
0%
72%
47%
6%
81%
39%
0%
69%
31%
0%
0%
6%
0%
8%
0%
0%
14%
25%
22%
77%
27%
2%
11%
9%
33%
86%
40%
5%
33%
13%
0%
85%
63%
0%
7%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
19%
7%
Adapted from Levin (2001) pp. 165–169.
Plural Verb Agreement
Plural verb agreement patterns predictably were the reverse of the patterns for singular
verb agreement discussed above. According to Levin (2001), BrE plural agreement appeared in
23 percent of writing and 32 percent of speech, while AmE plural agreement occurred much
more rarely at 3 percent in writing and 6 percent in speech (p. 76–77). Bock et al. (2006), in a
limited corpus analysis, similarly found that most collectives in AmE targeted in this paper took
plural verb agreement in fewer than 10 percent of cases. Specifically, in Levin’s (2001) study the
collective nouns clergy, couple, crew, crowd, and staff frequently took plural verbs in at least one
written dialect, as illustrated in Table 3 (pp. 165–169).
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Table 3: Plural Verb Agreement with Collective Nouns in AmE and BrE
Collective Noun
clergy
couple
crew
crowd
staff
Written AmE
63%
83%
2%
2%
2%
Spoken AmE
Written BrE
Spoken BrE
0%
100%
0%
40%
84%
95%
0%
55%
62%
0%
40%
44%
15%
97%
96%
Adapted from Levin (2001) pp. 165–169.
Bock et al. (2006) also found in BrE that clergy, couple, and staff took plural verb
agreement in 91 percent or more of cases. Depraetere (2003) found that plural agreement
occurred more frequently in BrE for the collectives crew, crowd, and staff. Overall, most of the
words preferred singular agreement.
Plural Pronoun Agreement
In spoken BrE and AmE, plural pronouns consistently appeared more frequently than
plural verbs in both Levin (2001) and Bock et al. (2006). In fact, the dialectal differences
between spoken BrE and AmE’s use of plural pronoun agreement were small compared to the
differences in verb agreement and singular pronoun agreement. In Levin’s (2001) study, plural
pronouns occurred with collective nouns in 94 percent of spoken AmE compared with 72 percent
of spoken BrE (pp. 109, 165–169), as illustrated by examples in Table 4.
Table 4: Plural Pronoun Agreement with Collective Nouns in Spoken AmE and BrE
Collective Noun
council
government
group
staff
Spoken AmE
Spoken BrE
100%
69%
67%
60%
95%
87%
100%
100%
Adapted from Levin (2001) pp. 165–169.
Bock et al.’s (2006) findings roughly concur with Levin’s (2001) findings for BrE, but
differ for AmE. Bock et al. (2006) found plural pronoun agreement in 59 (reflexive pronouns) to
62 (tag pronouns) percent of cases in BrE (written and spoken). However, in AmE plural
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pronoun agreement ranged from 67 (reflexive pronoun) to 72 (tag pronoun) percent of cases in
AmE (written and spoken), compared to Levin’s (2001) 94 percent (Bock et al., 2006, p. 82;
Levin, 2001, p. 109).
In writing, Levin (2001) found plural pronoun agreement less frequent in both BrE and
AmE. In written AmE, plural pronouns occurred in only 32 percent of cases, compared to 94
percent in speech (p. 108). In written BrE, the 56 percent plural pronoun agreement was much
closer to BrE’s spoken agreement levels (74%) (pp. 108, 165–169). Therefore, it appears that
BrE displays greater consistency between speech and writing in plural pronoun agreement than
AmE, as illustrated by examples in Table 5.
Table 5: Plural Pronoun Agreement with Collective Nouns in AmE and BrE
Collective Noun
crew
family
staff
Written AmE
64%
73%
66%
Spoken AmE
Written BrE
Spoken BrE
100%
92%
100%
98%
89%
91%
100%
100%
100%
Adapted from Levin (2001) pp. 165–169.
Mixed Agreement
Mixed agreement, or “shifts” as Levin (2001) terms the phenomenon, is a construction
where a shift between singular and plural agreement with a single controller occurs within a
single or an adjacent sentence. In Levin (2001), the most frequent shift was a collective noun that
occurs with a singular verb and a plural pronoun. For example, “The women’s team received
their medals.” Generally, shifts occurred more often in written AmE than BrE. Specifically,
collective nouns produced shifts in both BrE and AmE writing, although more commonly in the
latter, as indicated by examples in Table 6.
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Table 6: Mixed Agreement with Collective Nouns in Written AmE and BrE
Collective Noun
audience
crowd
family
team
Written AmE
Written BrE
31–40%
>40%
>40%
>40%
31–40%
21–30%
11–20%
21–30%
Adapted from Levin (2001) pp. 165–169.
In speech, AmE also contains higher rates of shifts. Specifically, commission, family,
committee, government, and team featured shifts in 31 percent or more of the BrE corpora,
whereas results from the spoken AmE corpora indicate that the collective nouns, committee,
company, family, and group produce shifts “in at least two thirds of the instances” (Levin, 2001,
p. 120).
Discussion
Theories of Agreement
The traditional explanation for the variable number agreement patterns of collective
nouns is referred to as notional concord. Levin (1999) summarizes this explanation: “singular
forms are used when a collective is thought of as a unit and plural forms when the speaker or
writer has the individual members in mind” (p. 21). Depraetere (2003) notes that this view is
upheld by most current grammars (e.g. Quirk et al., 1985; Collins Cobuild English grammar,
1990; Dekeyser et al., 1999; Biber et al., 1999). Poutsma (1914) refers to a similar principle to
explain the fact that collectives that comprise a large number of individuals, such as army, force,
and nation, tend toward singular agreement, noting that speakers will more readily conceive of
these collectives as unitary entities. Conversely, collectives that imply “a small body of persons”
(p. 284), such as board, family, government, or council, tend toward plural agreement, since the
individuals are generally in stronger focus. (Poutsma does not mention dialectal variation.)
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Levin (2001) sees some echo of the notional explanation in his data. He notes, for
example, that decision-making bodies (company, council, committee, government, department,
party) tend to take singular verb agreement in both dialects under consideration, except in the
British government’s official usage of government, which prescribes plural verb usage. In a later
study of low-frequency collectives, Levin (2006) similarly found a statistically significant
increase in singular verb use in BrE as the number of people specified by the collective increased
(duo, trio, quartet, quintet). Furthermore, couple, which implies the smallest plurality possible,
was one of the few collectives in Levin (2001) that had a high incidence of plural verb agreement
in AmE (40% spoken, 83% written).
However, the traditional theory does not account for dialectal variation in agreement.
Bock et al. (2006) point out a potential flaw in appealing to notional concord: “The traditional
view, in short, is that British and American speakers use different kinds of information in
agreement” (p. 65). That is, since AmE usage favors singular verb agreement for nearly all
collectives, regardless of their semantic characteristics, American speakers would rely primarily
on grammatical information to determine number agreement, whereas British speakers would
rely on notional information.
Bock et al. (2006) carried out series of experiments to test whether such a difference
between the linguistic information used by speakers of each dialect to determine agreement
indeed produces the dialectal divergence in agreement patterns observed in studies such as Levin
(2001). Bock et al.’s (2006) first experiment involved pronoun elicitation, with the following
result: “Pronoun elicitation yielded strong evidence that both American and British speakers
regard collectives as notionally plural” (p. 82). The high frequencies of plural pronouns in Bock
et al.’s (2006) study for both dialects also matched Levin’s (2001) findings.
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The second experiment took advantage of attraction to discern the number value speakers
assigned to collectives through their number marking of verbs. Bock et al. (2006) define
attraction as the phenomenon whereby “agreement features from a noun phrase that is not the
canonical controller of agreement appear on an agreement target” (p. 68). As an example, the
study cites native AmE speaker statements such as, “At first, membership in these unions were
(sic) voluntary” (American, 1990, cited in Bock et al., 2006, p. 68). The study found that
Britons’ responses were two and a half times more likely than Americans’ responses to display
plural attraction after collectives, even though Americans’ responses were four times more likely
to display plural attraction after plural nouns. The authors thus conclude: “British speakers treat
certain collectives as plurals with respect to verb agreement because, lexically, the collectives
carry a plural number specification (Bock et al., 2006, p. 92).” More broadly, “Our results for
British and American collective agreement suggest that lexically controlled features are
responsible for the differences in plural agreement between the varieties” (Bock et al., 2006, p.
99).
Depraetere (2003) sees evidence of lexical specification in the fact that, considered as a
set, the BrE verb-number-variable collectives investigated in her study demonstrated a
statistically significant preference for singular verbs. This set excluded instances of collectives
whose verb number selection could easily be determined by contextual factors, such as the
presence of singular determiners or verbs that imply a unitary or dispersed action. Others have
observed lexical specification in diachronic change in agreement patterns with collectives.
Studying corpora of BrE from 1961 and 1991, Siemund (1995) found that collectives were
increasingly shifting to take only singular or only plural verb agreement. Levin (1999) notes,
“His [Siemund’s] conclusion is that variable concord with a particular noun ‘reflects notional
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concord that is being maintained until grammaticalisation takes place, ie (sic) until one variant is
perceived to be wrong’” (p. 25). Levin (2006), noticing a similar decrease in low-frequency
collectives that take either singular or plural verb agreement in BrE, concludes that “[t]he
differences between the nouns provide strong support for the idea that the choice between a
singular and a plural verb form is to a large extent independent of the type of verb used
(Depraetere, 2003; Levin, 2001: 129ff), and that therefore the most important factor determining
agreement with collective nouns in BrE in a given text type appears not to be the semantic and
pragmatic context, but the individual (frequency-independent) preferences of the nouns” (p.
333). Levin also applies this observation to AmE in his 2001 study.
Lexical specification thus appears to be the strongest determinant of verb number
agreement. However, the divergent patterns of number markings on verbs and pronouns in both
dialects necessitate a different explanation for pronoun agreement patterns. Bock et al. (2006)
hint at an explanation when they observe that pronoun agreement patterns in AmE and BrE
demonstrates that speakers of both dialects conceive of collectives as notionally plural. Levin
(2001) posits that the pronoun agreement patterns reflects Corbett’s (1979, 1983) Agreement
Hierarchy, which he summarizes as follows: “The hierarchy compares the likelihood of
‘syntactic’ and ‘semantic’ agreement…the further away a target is from its controller, the lesser
the probability of syntactic agreement becomes” (p. 105). Syntactic agreement in this case is
singular; semantic or notional agreement is arguably plural. The Agreement Hierarchy ranks
targets from most to least likely to take syntactic agreement: attributive, predicate, relative
pronoun, and personal pronoun. Thus, the Agreement Hierarchy predicts that verbs, which are
part of the predicate, are more likely to take syntactic agreement than personal pronouns. For
example, it is more likely that a native speaker will produce the sentence, "The board feels that
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they need to lay off some workers" (singular verb followed by plural pronoun) than "The board
feel that it needs to lay off some workers" (plural verb followed by singular pronoun). This
framework also explains why the most frequent form of shift in Levin’s (2001) data is from
singular verb to plural pronoun.
The authors of all three primary studies reviewed do note that, to a lesser extent, the
semantic and syntactic context of any given collective can also predispose it toward singular or
collective agreement, as long as the collective is one that accepts variable agreement
(Depraetere, 2003). For example, Depraetere (2003) and Levin (2001) note that some verbs and
verbal phrases (e.g. disagree, leave, or make up one’s mind) promote plural verb agreement,
while other verbal phrases, such as consist of, promote the singular. However, counterexamples
exist in the data of both studies. Determiners can also influence verb number marking. Singular
determiners (e.g. a, this, and every) correlate with a higher incidence of singular agreement
(Levin, 2001), as do the postdeterminers entire and whole (Depraetere, 2003). Conversely, with
the predeterminer all, plural agreement predominates (Levin, 2001). However, Depraetere (2003)
stresses that these factors are secondary in determining agreement. The studies also cite other
contextual factors that will here be omitted for the sake of brevity.
Pedagogical Implications
ESL or EFL students who have learned English in a different dialectal context or who
will use English in varied dialectal contexts need heuristics that can work both in a classroom
using AmE and outside of the classroom, in settings were AmE or BrE predominate. Reflecting
on her findings on verb agreement patterns in BrE, Depraetere (2003) suggests, “It may be safe
to advise students to use the singular as the default form, unless there are very clear semantic
and/or pragmatic indications that impose the use of a plural verb” (p. 124). To this end, first
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teaching students the singular as the default form of verb agreement, followed by teaching the
specific collectives that strongly favor plural in each dialect, such as people, police, and staff,
among others, in BrE, and couple, people, and police in AmE (Depraetere, 2003, p. 111; Levin,
2001, pp. 120 &163), would lessen the cognitive load for learners. Additionally, if students more
familiar with BrE are confused by the agreement patterns presented in the American classroom,
referencing the other, more familiar, dialect reinforces their own “current” understanding of
English and helps them to notice the new dialect. Conversely, students who are familiar with BrE
but will at some point need to make themselves understood and accepted in contexts where BrE
predominates will be better equipped to interpret British interlocutors’ speech and respond
appropriately if they have received explicit instruction on dialectal variation.
Given the fact that pronoun agreement with collectives varies less between dialects,
students may benefit most from comparison of patterns of pronoun agreement in the two media
of speech and writing. Classrooms often rely on prescriptivist explanations of grammar. These
explanations not only present an unnecessarily rigid and artificial view of language; they also
tend to present written grammar as normative, often failing to acknowledge the spoken grammar
employed by native speakers and the effect of spontaneity on agreement. Quirk et al. (1985)
comment on the prescriptive tradition: “The conception of singular agreement may then have
been reinforced as the most ‘correct’ choice in writing, since it occurs so frequently in writing
and since writing tends to be considered the most correct form of language,” (p. 14). Regarding
the spontaneity of speech, Levin (2001) comments: “Speakers in general do not have the time
(nor the inclination) to adjust to written norms” (p. 73). Especially in AmE, where the use of
plural pronouns with collectives differs between speech and writing by 62 percentage points
(94% vs. 32%, respectively), students who do not learn that plural pronouns are the norm for
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collectives in speech will sound marked in their use of pronouns if they transfer the preference
for singular pronouns in writing to the medium of speech (Levin, 2001, pp. 165–169).
Conclusion
The traditional view that BrE favors plural agreement and AmE singular agreement for
collective nouns does hold some truth. Levin’s (2001) data shows that singular agreement occurs
more than 20 percent more often in both written and spoken AmE than it does in BrE. In
addition, AmE has a 97 percent rate of singular verb agreement in writing and 91 percent rate of
singular agreement in speech (pp. 76-77).
However, the traditional view needs to be corrected and qualified. First, Levin (2001) and
Depraetere (2003) found that BrE in fact also favors singular verb agreement, even if it allows
for plural verb agreement far more often than does AmE. Second, when agreement is considered
not only in terms of verb agreement but also pronoun agreement, a simple distinction cannot be
made between the two dialects. In writing, plural pronoun agreement is more common in BrE
(56%) than AmE (32%). However, in speech, plural pronoun agreement is more common in
AmE (94%) than BrE (72%) (Levin, 2001, pp. 108–109).
Furthermore, these overall patterns to not apply directly to any given collective. Rather,
collective nouns each display individual agreement patterns. For example, in BrE, staff takes
plural verb agreement in 97 percent of writing and 96 percent of speech. Staff takes plural
pronoun agreement in 100 percent of writing and speech, whereas government takes singular
verb agreement in 95 percent of writing and 86 percent of speech. Government takes singular
pronouns in 56 percent of writing and 40 percent of speech (Levin, 2001, pp. 166–169). Other
collectives represent several intermediate positions of preference for singular or plural verbs and
pronouns. These idiosyncratic agreement preferences of different collectives suggest that
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collectives have individual lexical number specifications, which do not neatly reflect semantic
characteristics. While other factors play a limited role, it appears that a difference between BrE
and AmE in the lexical specification of various collectives largely accounts for the different verb
number agreement patterns seen in the two dialects.
Levin (2001) represents a very comprehensive study not only of dialectal variation but
also of variation by medium and genre in the number agreement patterns of collective nouns in
BrE and AmE, as well as Australian English (AusE). Nonetheless, research on the subject could
be supplemented in two important ways. Firstly, future research could expand study of
agreement with collective nouns to other English dialects. Bauer (1988) has conducted a limited
study of agreement with collectives in New Zealand English, and Hundt (2006) has studied the
subject in two outer-circle varieties, Singaporean and Filipino English. However, no research
exists on other inner-circle varieties, such as South African, Canadian, or Irish English, and
Levin’s (2001) study is the only one to discuss AusE at length. Even Levin (2001) did not study
spoken AusE, due to the unavailability of a spoken corpus. Secondly, efforts should be made to
compile and study updated corpora of BrE and AmE, as well as the other dialects noted above.
Levin’s (2001) sources were compiled in the 1990s. In particular, his written of sources of data
were taken from publications in 1995. The ten to fifteen years that have elapsed since the time of
this data’s compilation may not allow enough time to reveal diachronic changes. However, it
may be relevant to revisit the data on BrE and AmE in a few years to determine whether the
usage patterns gleaned from the studies discussed above still hold.
Beiler & Hatch | 18
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