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...