I spent my adolescence in Cambridge (the real one: MIT at one end,
Harvard at the other, BU across the bridge, Tuffts down the road...), so
I know some things. By the time I was 17 I was politically conservative;
and besotted with my own ego: Thought I was smart, I did. Yet people
continued to talk to me...
Parliament is a collective noun, hence the plural verb is acceptable.
Congress should be..., but is instead an abstract noun: Its opposite -as
was pointed out long ago by a wittier wag than I- is Progress.
And grammer was once taught in the mother country in a sensible way:
(Alfie Whitehead relates: If I'm unsure, I translate the sentence into
Greek. If it makes sense them, my qualms disappear.) Classics were
studied. People talked.
Until and unless Transformation/Generative Grammer makes a come-back,
I'll trust my own Yankee sensibilities. You should -where ever you're
from- trust your ear; if'n you don't know what a body's sayin', ask a
question.
ooOoo______________________________oOo____________________________ooOoo
Donald E. Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Oakdale CA USA
"Si no fuera por patochada..."
Oo---------------------------------ooo-------------------------------oO
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