Teacher JaneSubject-Verb Agreement (Part 2)
 In English, singular subjects usually take singular verbs, and plural subjects take plural verbs. My brother lives in Moscow, but my sisters live in St Petersburg. 1. But some subjects can be tricky. Firstly, indefinite pronouns like everybody, and everything have a plural meaning, but take singular verbs. Everybody is in hospital… nobody is safe. 2. Some nouns which end in -s are actually singular, like news, mathematics, physics, diabetes and rabies. Today’s news is that rabies is on the increase. 3. But, words like people, children, data and media need a plural verb even though they don’t end in –s. The media have collected more data. 4. Now a collective noun like family, team, government and group can be singular or plural, since we can view it as a single group, or as a collection of individuals. We can say: The team has worked well this year Or: The team have promised to work harder this year. So with this example: A group of tourists were bitten by a stray dog. Each tourist was bitten individually. The dog didn't bite them all together in one big bite! So to sum up: a. indefinite pronouns like everybody and nothing, take singular verbs. b. some nouns which end with –s, like news and diabetes – are actually single. c. other words like data and media are plural, and d. collective nouns like government and group can be single or plural.  Exercise 2: Word Order Choose the 5 words which complete each sentence: 1. The…shocking. the news are murders was were about 2. The…. taxes has are everybody's government did increased 3. English and …subjects. important school are was is very mathematics 4. …accommodation. wants much costs nobody leave to this 5. …about the new rules. for is are asking asks information everybody |