[Lexicog] Re: categorization of nouns

[Rudolph Troike]

A couple of interesting examples:

Ron Moe <ron_moe at sil.org> said:

> There are a couple of issues that are lurking around the edges of our
> discussion.

  -- Here, "couple" is grammatically singular, but the agreement perforce
is plural, so semantics clearly trumps form in this case.

John Roberts  <dr_john_roberts at sil.org> said:

> A herd of elephants is trampling the grass.    [modified for felicity's sake]
> That flock of chickens is being sold next week.

> For these kinds (or kind) of expressions I know I sometimes have the verb
> agreeing with the nearest plural noun in both speech and writing, and I have
> to correct myself because I know it is ungrammatical. ... But the rules of
>English
> grammar do not allow me to say what I really want to say.

  -- This sounds perilously like allowing someone's (Bishop Lowth's ?)
class-based prescriptive statements in school grammar books to define
"grammaticality" in some absolute way. Whatever native speakers of a
language do with any degree of regularity is "grammatical" by most
linguists' definition.
      From this and other comments, it is clear that when syntax and
semantics are in competition for the determination of form (here, verb
agreement), semantics will intuitively take precedence (unless linguis-
tically naive schoolmarms have intimidated the younger speaker still
within us to give syntax the upper hand).

     Rudy Troike



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