ArnoldPushkin
How can we distinguish between "has" and "have" in this example? I mean, for me Chelsea(a football club) in this example is clearly singular, since there is no marker which could suggest us to use has.
Posted from my mobile devicekaustav04
Could anyone please explain the nuance between "have" and "has" here?
Particularly in these kinds of usages.
Hello, everyone, particularly
ArnoldPushkin and
kaustav04 above, who ask a fair question. This one comes down to a difference between British English and American English in their treatment of collective nouns. See, for instance,
this article, particularly the section, "Verb agreement with collective nouns." As a fan of the Premier League, I can attest to the pluralization by commentators of a team
name, as in,
Chelsea are.... The convention is to think of Chelsea as a team composed of individual members. However, the same sentence on the other side of the pond would agree the singular subject
Chelsea with the verb
is, in reference to the team itself, rather than the members.
This is a fun question, even if it would not appear on the GMAT™.
- Andrew