[etni] Fw: The Police is or the Police are?
- From: "Ask" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "Etni" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:15:35 +0200
----- 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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