Own Horn

[today.14850.com]

(Note that last link. )

Beeeej

As a graduate English major, shouldn't you know that Cornell is an "it" and not a "they"?

The team goes to the tournament, not the school. The team is a group of players, and those players are a "they".

Cornell is an it. The Big Red are a they.

"Cornell goes for its ninth straight win..."

"The Big Red go for their ninth straight win..."

"Team" is also singular, although it is composed of multiple players.

In fact, "group" is also singular. And note that earlier in the article he used "Big Red" correctly as singular.

Actually, CUlater is correct based on one thing and one thing only: I started the piece in the singular, and should have remained consistent even if I'd been wrong. Instead I switched to the plural without using any plural nouns like "the icers" or "those guys."

It's the damn editor's fault. ;-{)}

Beeeej

Consistent use is, of course, important. But your initial approach to use singular is correct, in my experience. SunStyle (i.e. the rules and regs of The Cornell Daily Sun) considers "Red" and "Big Red" to be singular and I note the the CU athletics site uses it in the singular as well (although perhaps not in every case). Interestingly, the CU athletics site uses "Crimson" as plural.

Big Red is singular, Cornell is singular, group is singular, team is singular. The noun's ability to be broken down into small components (i.e. the team is made up of players) has no bearing whatsoever on subject-verb agreement. A team is still a single unit. As for Big Red, last I checked their aren't multiple Big Reds running around. Big Green and Crimson are also singular where as Quakers (Penn) are obviously plural.

Since we're talking about language here, I grabbed this from the uscho recap of the Clarkson-RPI game. I'll give anyone a buck if you can tell me what he's saying:

"It's really tough to score off a faceoff," said Cavosie. "It took everything, I got a pick and none of it happens if it all happens. I just happened to be the one pulling the trigger."

None of it happens if it all happens?

It also depends which side of the Atlantic you're on. Americans nearly always refer to companies in singular form ("Bell Atlantic is going to lay off 10,000 workers today", whereas Brits consistently say "British Telecom are kicking Bell Atlantic's butt." This holds true with sports teams as well, and they don't even have plural-named sports teams - "Arsenal are running up a tremendous record in the Premiership."

Robb's exactly right. I must have read 5,000 pages of Churchill in the past year and I still stumbled over that plural verb every time.

What they said. I first got exposed to the collective plural when I lived in Cambridge (the real one) for six months in 1994, and then came back and drove all my Californian friends crazy with it.

You drove your friends crazy with things you'd picked up in a foreign country, John? I find that hard to believe.

Beeeej

I'm sure you'll all be relieved to learn I decided to take a postdoc at Penn State rather than in Potsdam, Germany.

Congratulations, John! I guess that means your season ticket will get more consistent use next year. :-{)}

Beeeej

Everytime I read this thread's title, I think of Beeeej holding a placard:

Own horn. Will blow for food.

Greg, didn't we say we'd never speak of that again? I was young, I needed the money.

Beeeej

> The noun's ability to be broken down into small components (i.e. the team is made up of players) has no bearing whatsoever on subject-verb agreement

So "the French" is singular?

I haven't whipped out my Strunk and White, but I would swear that common usage (1) distinguishes between singular and plural collective nouns and (2) leaves it sufficiently ambiguous that there are cases that can go either way.

FWIW, I would classify team names as plural nouns, whether or not they follow the convention of ending in an "s." So, just as I wouldn't say "the Catamounts is," I wouldn't say "the Big Red is."

Would you say "The Red Sox is"?

I would say "the Red Sox suck."