ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book is the culmination of a comprehensive multifaceted corpus-based investigation into verb number agreement with complex collective noun phrases in English. It explores the role played by lexical factors in verb number agreement variation with complex collective subjects in order to gauge the potential idiomatic quantifying use of these subjects and determine the influence of that use on their present-day patterning. The book examines lexically specific and variety-specific variability. It reveals significant animacy-related collocational preferences with the oblique noun and the verb, which help to explain the main trends with respect to verb number agreement.
