non-head nominals and number agreement

[sagehen]

>It's standard for such constructions as "a lot of", "a number of",
>etc. to take plural agreement, inidcating that the nominals in such
>constructions are not heads but quantifiers (functioning essentially
>like "many").  I've been hearing some new ones lately.  On ABC's
>World News Tonight tonight, Charlie Gibson led off with a report on
>the report of a commission to address the military health care
>scandal by uttering (1) below.  Later in the same broadcast, he
>introduced another story, on security breaches at airports around the
>country, by uttering something like (2).  The latter doesn't strike
>me as particularly noteworthy; I'm sure I've heard "A series of...
>are/were..." or similar constructions without even noticing.  But the
>former one, "There have been no shortage of Xes...", struck me as
>novel, although not terribly shocking as a reanalysis of "a/no
>shortage(s) of" as a quantifier.
>
>(1)  There have been no shortage of stories about returning veterans who...
>
>(2)  There have been a series of incidents at airports...
>
>Any thoughts (from Arnold et/aut al.)?
>
>LH
>------------
 Brits at one time (and perhaps still, though I don't remember hearing it
in quite a while) used plural verbs with collective nouns, as in "The
government are..." &c.    If "shortage" is a collective representing a
group of  (non-existent) stories ......!   :-)
 We've seen " a series" used for "several" recently;  if that's legit, I
suppose this syntax would be acceptable.
I wouldn't use either (1) or (2) in serious writing.
AM

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