by sprocket <jas@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Mar 20, 2008 at 08:33 AM
Einde O'Callaghan wrote:
> Virtually all nouns that refer to groups behave in this way. Take for
> example the word "company": "Our company is based in the South-west of
> England. We supply high-quality widgets to the widget-processing
industry."
That's a poor example, as the "we" refers back to the group of people
represented by "our". But the core is true. You'll hear "The majority
are" more often than "is" and "The RAF were bombing Berlin", not "was".
But always "a mob was burning and looting". There may be a principle to
be distilled from all this, but I doubt it.
JS