ABSTRACT
Received wisdom says that collective nouns in English may show singular or plural agreement patterns based on their inherent notional plurality. For agreement variation to be possible, the verb must be applicable to either the collective as a whole or the individuals that compose it. Despite wide acknowledgement of the dual interpretation of collective nouns and their flexible verb number patterns, verb number variation with collective nouns is generally believed to be more confined to informal registers, with written language following formal agreement patterns. The research focuses on the role played by the morphosyntactic and lexico-semantic features of the prepositional phrase (of-PP) in determining subject-verb agreement. The research is based on the assumption that the of-PP and its constituent elements are a decisive factor in determining the patterning and present-day usage of the collective nouns they accompany. This chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
