Singular or Plural?

Hi Kyle,

You are absolutely correct that Collective nouns can be singular as well as plural. But in this case, the plural is not appropriate
Although I own their album, I have never seen the band in concert
In this sentence THEIR refers to band members (as implied & mentioned by you), but if we use THEIR, then it has no ANTECEDENT (BAND MEMBERS) in the sentence. As far as i know, a pronoun can not exist in a sentence without a proper & definitive antecedent

Although I own its album, I have never seen the band in concert
ITS is singular & the proper antecedent BAND is also present in the sentence.

Waiting for your inputs.

Fame

This is why treating collective nouns as plural is difficult (unless you are from England). When we treat a collective noun as plural we are talking about the members of the group, not the group itself. Here is an example: "I finally went to see the band in concert and they were all crazy." This sounds very strange to the ear because we almost exclusively treat collective nouns as singular. In my example, "they" refers to the band, but I'm emphasizing the members of the band, not the overall group so "they" is an appropriate pronoun with "band" as the antecedent (remember that "band" is in the plural).

In the original example, "Although I own their album, I have never seen the band in concert.", we are treating "band" in the same way as my example. The word "band" is plural so the plural pronoun "their" is appropriate.

Let me emphasize again, this plural is a very rare case that we are analyzing. On the GMAT, you should treat collective nouns as singular by rule. Exceptions may arise when the GMAT wants to emphasize the members, but those exceptions will be very rare.

KW

To me, a collective noun is always plural

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