agreement in grammar

[niceuser]

hi,

the problem is:
I can't decide which - singular or plural verb must be used with the following: The first group of tasks involve....or involves...

Thank you for explanation of the above.

 

[corum]

They involve...

 

[5jj]

The first group of tasks involves.

The grammatical subject of this sentence is the singular group (of tasks).

 

[niceuser]

Thank you, my opinion was the same as yours, however, I found a text in which the same sentence was used twice and with the different verb number.

have a good day,

 

[5jj]

I found a text in which the same sentence was used twice and with the different verb number.

have a good day, You too

Native speakers often make this type of mistake - making the verb agree with the nearest noun. In conversation most people wouldn't even notice it, but it's better to be more careful in writing.

 

[corum]

The first group of tasks involves.

The grammatical subject of this sentence is the singular group (of tasks).

Notional agreement? Rings any bell?

 

[corum]

http://josecarilloforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=691.0

The subject-verb agreement rule is no doubt one of the most important and most pervasive frameworks of English usage, but as most of us know, applying this rule is not always that simple. This is because aside from ensuring grammatical agreement between verb and subject, English also takes into account notional agreement...

The subject-verb agreement rule becomes even tougher to apply in constructions where there is strong ambiguity in the choice of the number to be taken by the verb. Take this sentence, for instance: “A wide assortment of dishes has been/have been ordered for the party.” The traditional approach, of course, is to make the verb agree with the grammatical subject of the sentence, which in this case is the singular noun “assortment,” so the singular verb “has been” becomes the logical choice. However, it can also be convincingly argued that the noun phrase “a wide assortment of dishes,” which is plural in sense, is the proper subject, so the plural “have been” can also be a logical choice. Using the plural verb for such constructions is actually gaining wider acceptance, but the singular verb remains the favored usage. What this means is that we can have it either way without messing up our grammar.

 

[corum]

Quirk et. al.

Principles of grammatical concord, notional concord,
and proximity

10.35 The rule that the verb matches its subject in number may be called the
principle of GRAMMATICAL CONCORD. Difficulties over concord arise through
occasional conflict between this and two other principles: the principle of
NOTIONAL CONCORD and the principle of PROXIMITY.

Notional concord is agreement of verb with subject according to the notion
of number rather than with the actual presence of the grammatical marker
for that notion. In British English, for example, collective nouns such as
government are often treated as notionally plural:

The government have broken all their promises. (BrE)


In this example, the plural notion is signalled not only by the plural verb
have, but also by the pronoun their.


No one except his own supporters agree with him.

The preceding plural noun supporters has influenced the choice of the plural
verb agree, although the subject No one except his own supporters is
grammatically singular, since the head no one is singular. On the other hand,
the proximity principle is here reinforced by notional concord ('Only his own
supporters agree with him'), making the sentence somewhat more acceptable
than if the proximity principle alone applied.


English speakers are often uncertain about the rules of concord.
Prescriptive teaching has insisted rather rigidly on grammatical concord,with the result that people often experience a conflict between this rule and
the rule of notional concord, which tends to prevail over it.

Ten dollars is all I have left.
That five dollars is not enough.

 

[niceuser]

Good morning,

I appreciate both of the stands. And the discussion thereof.


Have a good day,

 

[Tdol]

Singular and plural may be simple in theory, but in practice they are complex and there are different views. In this case, though I will often use the principle of proximity, it sounds better to me in the singular; you have first + group here, which I think over-rides the plural noun that comes next.

This does, of course, complicate the picture because I agree with Fivejedjon but for different reasons as I don't think that allowing verbs to agree with adjacent nouns is wrong. I think 'There's a dog and a cat outside' sounds better than 'there are a dog and a cat outside', and would argue that it is a perfectly correct sentence..

 

[corum]

Singular and plural may be simple in theory, but in practice they are complex and there are different views. In this case, though I will often use the principle of proximity, it sounds better to me in the singular; you have first + group here, which I think over-rides the plural noun that comes next.

This does, of course, complicate the picture because I agree with Fivejedjon but for different reasons as I don't think that allowing verbs to agree with adjacent nouns is wrong. I think 'There's a dog and a cat outside' sounds better than 'there are a dog and a cat outside', and would argue that it is a perfectly correct sentence..

This you like?
There is a dog and (there is) a cat. -- ellipsis

'There' is an expletive and serves as the structural subject in the sentence. How can semantically empty words assign number to their verbs?

One way: it is not the grammatical subject but the deep subject which assigns number to the verb.
This means we should not always look for the grammatical subject in a sentence when it comes to subject-verb agreement. Grammatical agreement does not always work.

 

[5jj]

The government have broken all their promises. (BrE)
As a speaker of BrE, I am happy with this.

No one except his own supporters agree with him.

The preceding plural noun supporters has influenced the choice of the plural verb agree, although the subject No one except his own supporters is grammatically singular, since the head no one is singular. On the other hand, the proximity principle is here reinforced by notional concord ('Only his own supporters agree with him'), making the sentence somewhat more acceptable than if the proximity principle alone applied.
Interesting point. It's possibly why I would use a plural verb here.

Ten dollars is all I have left.
That five dollars is not enough.
These, I feel, are different. The speaker here regards 'ten dollars' as a (singular) sum of money, the notional concord that you mention. In cases such as these I don't think that even prescriptive grammarians would use a plural verb form.

With the OP's The first group of tasks involves, my own schooling prevails over my more recent path to descriptivism. For me a plural verb is incorrect here. But, I must accept that this is my feeling, not a clear case of 'grammar as fact'.

 

[Tdol]

One way: it is not the grammatical subject but the deep subject which assigns number to the verb.
This means we should not always look for the grammatical subject in a sentence when it comes to subject-verb agreement. Grammatical agreement does not always work.

It's one way, but it seems to me that there are various possibilities operating, and as I suggested I am not always consistent.

 

[Franklin-the IELTS fan]

hi,

the problem is:
I can't decide which - singular or plural verb must be used with the following: The first group of tasks involve....or involves...

Thank you for explanation of the above.

My take on this is involves.

Reason: IMHO, the subject group in the sentence is a collective noun taken as a unit (as in different tasks put together in a group).Thus, singular verb I believe should be used.

 

[niceuser]

...what a lively discussion!

I have one more opinion from another , I suppose, a competent person...
In BrE both singular and plural are possible, however, Americans are more conservative in this case, they would choose " group.....involves"

nice time to you all while trying to find the truth..is there any truth at all ?..even in language matters, it is impossible to come to .. ;-)

 

[corum]

is there any truth at all ?

YouTube - X FILES - THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

 

[corum]

My take on this is involves.

Reason: IMHO, the subject group in the sentence is a collective noun taken as a unit (as in different tasks put together in a group).Thus, singular verb I believe should be used.

Mine was this:

first group of X = several

Who is right? And why? Taking into view only the grammatical agreement is simplistic, IMO.

 

[5jj]

Slight misunderstanding in the last four or five posts. On this matter, as in all matters, I am right. I have this on very good authority - mine!


;-)

 

[Tdol]

My take on this is involves.

Reason: IMHO, the subject group in the sentence is a collective noun taken as a unit (as in different tasks put together in a group).Thus, singular verb I believe should be used.

There are differences about the use of a singular or plural verb with collective nouns- AmE tends to favour the singular, but the plural is very common in BrE, and in all variants there are some that always seem to take a plural verb like cattle.

 

[philo2009]

hi,

the problem is:
I can't decide which - singular or plural verb must be used with the following: The first group of tasks involve....or involves...

Thank you for explanation of the above.

In AmE, where number concord is relatively strictly observed, the grammatical subject, here 'group', determines verbal number. Thus, most AmE speakers would, I believe, accept only 'involves' here.

In BrE, a phenomenon technically termed synesis (known also as 'notional concord) allows for verbal number to be plural even where the grammatical subject is singular provided that the overall reference of the subject NP is to more than one individual (esp. person or animal), making possible such locutions as the family/army/government/population/herd are...

However, even in BrE notional concord is not an 'automatic' entitlement: it tends to be limited to cases - albeit the majority in practice - where the predication is logically applicable to all members of the collective unit, excluding those where it relates specifically to the collective unit itself.

To illustrate: I can say

My family have suffered because of this.

because the act of suffering is predicated of all the individual members of my family.

On the other hand, in the sentence at issue, which presumably continues along the lines of

The first group of tasks involves assigning values to...

, the predication is made of the collective unit 'group' alone: put another way, the job of assigning values is presented essentially as a kind of defining feature of the group, that common factor by virtue of which the 'group' is conceived of as existing in the first place. There are no separate, distinct tasks of which it could meaningfully be said that each one is busily assigning values to things!

Thus, with regard to this particular case, my judgment would be that, for an AmE speaker, a sentence beginning

*The first group of tasks involve...

would be unacceptable, whilst, for a BrE speaker, it would at best be structurally dubious.

In light of the above, my final recommendation is therefore:

The first group of tasks involves...