P. J. Alling wrote: > I don't think corporations are singular in Britain. But you see strange > anomalies over time as well.
Collective nouns are plural in Britain. You'll notice it all the time with sports teams. In British English it's correct to say "Manchester *are* playing Liverpool..." > Prior to the 1860s a writer would have written "The United States of > America are..." afterward the same writer > would most likely have written, "The United States of America is..." > Small difference that a war makes in point of view. It's also likely that American usage started out the same as British and slowly evolved into its current form. You can make a logical argument either way when it comes to treating collective nouns as singular or plural, but languages seldom behave logically. ;-) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
