[etni] Re: Fw: The Police is or the Police are?
- From: "Bari Nirenberg" <bnirenberg@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: graniewitz@xxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 17:42:13 +0200
Actually, this is only partially true. Americans probably refer to British
sports teams in the singular because the names are in the singular form
(Manchester United, for example). However, every American team I can think
of has a plural name (NY Mets, Miami Dolphins, San Francisco 49ers -- you
get the idea) and they are referred to in the plural form.
Bari
On Nov 22, 2007 4:48 PM, David Graniewitz <graniewitz@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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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