Agreement question

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 01:39:33PM -0400, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
> I've read that British usage tends to give a plural, collectivist sense to
> words like "press," along the lines Pat mentioned in another posting.  I
> can't think of other examples cited, though, and I can't recall the
> source.  Was it on this list?

It's a general feature of British English that various kinds of group
nouns tend to take plural concord, e.g. "British Telecom are profitable
this quarter", "Manchester United have won the FA cup" [the frequency
of this sort of construction in World Cup coverage, mentioned by another
posted, is surely due to the reporters' being British in the examples
in question], "The government are divided about how to...", etc.

But the putatively increased acceptability of the "press tell" example
is not, I think, due to a British English influence.

Jesse Sheidlower