[Ads-l] "A _team_ of UC Davis students _are_..."

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 12:14 PM, MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY
RDECOM AMRDEC (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at mail.mil> wrote:

> On 30 December 2016 at 00:25 Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
>      1) Creeping Britspeak?
>
>      2) Operation of the innovation that the number of the verb is
> controlled by the number of the closest noun preceding the verb -
> "students" -
> and not by the number of the subject - "team"?
>
>
I've just heard on reality TV,

"Anybody who *could* be out there _*were*_ out there!"

and there's no plural, thereby occluding the reality of (2). But the
speaker was being interrogated by the cops, so...

Youneverknow.
-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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