[Ads-l] [Non-DoD Source] Re: The United States Is/Are

[MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US)]

I may give that a try, but the omission of very common words is only one part of the data collection problem.  You also have to (manually?) filter out stuff like, "Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, is opening a new soul food restaurant in Foggy Bottom."  (Well, you probably wouldn't have to filter _that_ particular sentence, but you see what I'm getting at.)

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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Beth Young [zbyoung at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2016 3:59 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: The United States Is/Are

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It's not a perfect answer, but you can get at this question with the google
books ngram viewer: https://goo.gl/ZXQLy0 (This is one of the searches Ben
Zimmer talks about here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/bigger-better-google-ngrams-brace-yourself-for-the-power-of-grammar/263487/
)

Beth



On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 4:27 PM, Bill Mullins <amcombill at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I've heard many times that before the Civil War, the usual phrase was "the
> United States are", and after, it was "the United States is".  The United
> States went from a plural noun to a singular one.
>
> Does anyone know where this originated?  Have any of you tried to prove or
> disprove it?  (Too many databases ignore "is" and "are" to make it easy to
> check.)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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