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Collective Nouns – Singular or Plural?


I recently answered a couple of queries on Beat the GMAT regarding collective nouns and whether they should be treated as singular or plural. From the large number of posts that the query on "collective nouns" received, I am guessing this is one of those areas in GMAT Prep that has many a student confused. Here is something that can help ease your confusion on "collective nouns".

Look at the following sentences:

"A majority of tax payers often dread the tax season because of the sheer amount of paper work that is required".

"An 80% majority suggests that filing of taxes should be made simpler".

Note that both these sentences are correct. In the first sentence however, the collective noun "majority" is treated as plural whereas in the second sentence, the same collective noun is treated as singular?

One may ask why this oddity? Here is the answer:

"Majority" is one of those words in the English language which can be used as both singular and plural.  In the sentence "A majority of tax payers often dread the tax season because of the sheer amount of paper work that is required", the noun "majority" should be treated as plural because it refers to a collection of individuals. However, when the noun "majority" is used to indicate a collective group, " An 80% suggests that filing of taxes should be made simpler", it takes a singular verb.

The same rule holds for collective nouns, "audience" and "team". Both have singular as well as plural usages.

Look at the following sentence:

While the play was being performed the audience was a picture of silence and showed its appreciation; the minute the play came to an end the audience rushed to get out of their seats and head towards their cars.

The sentence is correct. The collective noun, "audience" in this example, takes a singular pronoun if the members are treated as a unit but a plural if they act individually.

Here are some more examples:

The team is upbeat after the recent victory.

The team are divided on one minor point. 

Here, both the sentences are correct. In the first, the team as a whole is upbeat and is therefore treated as singular unit. In the second sentence, the focus is on individual team members rather than the team as a collective unit, therefore the plural verb "are" is appropriate.

Note: A quick look into OG 12 will reveal that these concepts are rarely tested in GMAT. However, as long as there are collective nouns, the debate over them will continue.

The Sentence Correction section in GMAT can be tricky, but the sentence correction questions are perhaps the least time consuming and can help you score quite high in the GMAT Verbal Section. A GMAT Test Prep Course can help put you on the right track. Gurome (www.gurome.com) holds GMAT Test Prep Courses every month. Sign up for a free GMAT Test Prep Trial Class today and get cracking on your GMAT.

About the author: Ms. Arpita Sen is the Director of Admissions at Gurome, Inc. and a featured expert in Beat the GMAT. You can read more about her at: http://gurome.com/info/executive.html

Posted by kalyani at Aug 5, 2010 2:08:03 PM
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