GMAT Prep - Verbal - Sentence Correction - Collective Nouns and Generic Nouns as Subjects by Knewton

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Subject-verb agreement can be particularly tricky when the subject of our sentence is a collective noun for a generic noun. Now a collective noun names a class or a group. Nouns like "jury," "committee," or "group" are collective nouns. A generic noun represents a typical member of a group. Let's see how collective nouns usually function in a sentence. Usually, the things described as a collective noun functions as a unit, and is therefore treated as a singular noun. For instance, take this sentence, "The committee grant its permission for the artist to place her sculpture in the park." The collective noun, "committee" is talking about a number of people, but they're acting as one unit to give permission for this artist to place her sculpture in the park. Therefore, the noun, "committee" takes the singular verb "grants" and the singular pronoun, "its" when talking bout what it does. However, things can get a little bit trickier when the members of a collective noun or the things described by a collective noun function as individuals rather than a group. Look at this example: "The committee put their signatures on the document." Since all of the members of the committee would have to individually sign a document, and they couldn't act as a group in this case, we treat "committee" as a plural noun which makes the plural verb, "put" and the plural pronoun, "their." Generic nouns are grammatically singular. This sentence, "The black bear are remarkably strong climbers" isn't talking about a particular bear but some member of the group, "The black bear." Nonetheless, because we're talking about one particular bear, we treat this as a singular noun and it should take the singular verb and the singular predicate noun. "The black bear is a remarkably strong climber" would be the correct way to write this sentence.


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[intdx]

His style is fantastic and he is very smart too :)

[Ingenue001]

cool

[historytrivia001]

Good lesson for English writers. This is the grammar area that I often make mistakes on.

[isoupload]

great tutorial video, very helpful

[lld1903]

Very easy to understand.

[cowboybill104]

Very clear and easy to understand. The glare on speaker's glasses is slightly distracting.

[gladiator901]

thanks...your videos are really helpful

[quertyou]

Thank you for the help explaining the rules of English.

[ConcordTurk]

Good clean presentation of an important concept. However, the flare on the speaker's glasses was distracting. I suggest retaking this clip and repositioning the lights. A little pancake makeup would help, too.

[victvijay]

The video was very much informative.