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apandey1
New postPosted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 1:01 am 
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Collective nouns, such as family, majority, audience, and committee are singular when they act in a collective fashion or represent one group. They are plural when they act as individuals.
Collective nouns will usually be singular in Sentence Correction sentences.

A majority of the shareholders wants the merger. ( As wilfred mentions that when they are in complete totality, then "majority" would be singular else it would be plural)

The majority of students were staying in the hostel. Here "students" are acting on their own will and hence they are indiviual hence majority would be plural.

This is my understanding, let me know if i am wrong?


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mailtheguru
  Re: percent, number, fraction, some ... [#permalink]
New postPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 6:55 am 
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Vithal wrote:
ywilfred wrote:
gmataquaguy wrote:
HongHu wrote:
percent, number, fraction, some ...

nocilis wrote:
X of Y
X: %, percent, number, fraction etc.
Y: subject

is a case where the combined subject is singular or plural, based on whether Y is singular or plural.

So,

A high percentage of the population _____is____ voting for the new school.

A high percentage of the people ____were_____ voting for the new school.

are the correct answers as population is a singular and people is a plural subject.

Some more examples:
10% of the students are not in the class (plural)
One third of the cake has been eaten (singular)

One more note:
The following words can result in either a singular or plural subject based on the subject it acts on

1) Some of :
Example:
Some of the cookies are missing - OK
Some of the cake is missing - OK

2)Any of

3)Most of

4)All of



Why is people a "plural" subject? I thought it was a collective noun? Could anyone please elaborate on why population is plural?

Also could someone elaborate on when a collective noun takes a plural form?

I've read the following but still cant seem to make sense of their examples:

http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/plur ... tive_nouns



regards,
gmataquaguy


Why is people a "plural" subject?
The singular form of people is person. People is plural.
As to why it's this way , I don't really know. Your question is as good as asking why the plural form of 'car' is 'cars'. That's just the way the Grammar is ! :-D

Could anyone please elaborate on why population is plural?
Population refers to a group of people located in a region and so it is singular, not plural.

Also could someone elaborate on when a collective noun takes a plural form?
A collective noun always take a singular verb form.


A collective noun takes a plural verb when the statement is meant to refer to the individual entities within the collective noun

For Eg: The jury were stationed in the hotels around Chicago downtown.

In the above sentence, Jury is meant to refer to individual members within the jury.


I really really doubt the correctness of this sentence. I dont think grammar allows you to infer the reference of the collective nount. it is always black and white. And, in this case
The jury was stationed in the hotels around Chicago downtown.
Try pasting your sentence in MS Word..


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manishhemnani
  Thanks [#permalink]
New postPosted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 8:31 pm 
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ywilfred wrote:
Here are the notes I took while preparing for sc. :-D


Thanks for the note ywilfred! They are very helpful since my doubts were on the same wavelength as were yours :-D

Manish


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Werewolf
  Re: Useful things to know for SC: [#permalink]
New postPosted: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:22 am 
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nice collection!


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