Singular and Plural Verb Agreement (Word Usage)

Singular and Plural Verb Agreement

Something that new speakers of English have an especially hard time with is the odd rule that forces us to add an "s" to the ends of many verbs in the third person singular form. Again, this sounds complex, but it really just means that when "he," "she," "it," or "one" is the subject of a given verb, we add an "s" to the end of that verb. The verb "to eat," for example, is conjugated in the present tense as follows: I eat, you eat, he eats, she eats, it (one) eats, we eat, you (plural) eat, they eat. Notice only the third person singular forms require this modification, and this baffles many new learners of English because they learn to associate the "s" with making plurals very early on, and in this case, it is only used on some verbs in a singular form. When comics do impressions of foreign speakers, they often use this common error to get a laugh, in sentences like "He talk too fast!" The impressions may be highly exaggerated in general, but in the case of verb agreement, they are largely accurate.

Almost all native speakers get this right every time, and it seems very natural. However, there are some difficult, counterintuitive cases that must be learned and practiced so that they can become natural. Take, for example, the following sentence: "The group of swans fly south for the winter." Is this right? The only way to tell is to examine the sentence, and to see if the verb agrees with its subject, which is not as straightforward a process as it may seem. In this case, the verb is the easier of the two entities to locate because it must be "fly," as that is the only verb in the sentence. Now, we have to ask ourselves, what exactly is doing the flying? It is obvious that it is the groups of swans that is flying, and since there are many swans, the proper verb form is "fly," like in the plural "they fly," as opposed to the singular third person "it flies." So, the sentence must be right.... Unfortunately, this very common and seemingly solid reasoning leads to the wrong conclusion every time.

Thinking back to previous articles, we can recall that the subject is usually in the first position in a sentence, and that the subject never follows a preposition. Looking back to the example sentence, we can see that the first position is occupied by the phrase "the group." The only other contender for the role of subject in the sentence is "swans," but since this word is preceded by a preposition, it is instantly disqualified from consideration. Therefore, the subject of the sentence is "group," and although this noun seems to refer to many things, because it treats them as a single whole, it is a singular noun. As we know, the third person singular form of the verb "to fly" is "flies" (as in "it flies"), and so the sentence should read "The group of swans flies south for the winter." This may sound wrong, but it is absolutely correct. Once you have the subject of the sentence (in this case "group") ask yourself "how many of these things (groups in this case) are there in the sentence: one, or more than one? This takes the focus off the plural swans which don't affect the verb, and places it on the subject. In this case, there is only one group, so the verb is modified for a third person singular subject.

As a final note, remember that "none" is considered a singular noun as well, so that the sentence "None of the swans eats flowers" is correct. To remember this, always replace "none" with "not one" in your head, and this should make the proper form of the verb much easier to remember.