Questions: Grammatical Agreement: A Comprehensive Overview

Question 1

Which sentence contains an agreement error, and why?

• A. "The committee has reached its decision." — error because committee refers to multiple people
• B. "The quality of these paintings are impressive." — error because the head subject 'quality' is singular, not 'paintings'
• C. "The students submitted their assignments on time." — error because 'their' is plural
• D. "Each of the runners has finished the race." — error because 'runners' is plural

Answer: (B)

'Quality' is the head noun and the grammatical subject — it is singular, so the verb must be 'is,' not 'are.' The phrase 'of these paintings' is a prepositional modifier; 'paintings' is not the subject. This is the classic intervening-noun trap: the plural noun sits immediately before the verb and attracts incorrect plural agreement, but agreement is always controlled by the head noun. Options A, C, and D are all grammatically correct.

Question 2

In the sentence 'The team are arguing among themselves about the strategy,' how should prescriptive American English grammar evaluate this?

• A. Correct in all varieties of English — 'team' always takes plural agreement
• B. Non-standard in American English, where collective nouns like 'team' take singular agreement ('the team is arguing')
• C. Incorrect in all varieties of English — collective nouns always require singular verbs
• D. Correct because 'themselves' in the same sentence signals that plural agreement is required throughout

Answer: (B)

Collective nouns like 'team,' 'committee,' and 'jury' are grammatically singular in American English when treated as a unified entity. British English permits plural agreement when focus is on members acting individually. The presence of 'themselves' doesn't override this — it follows from the conceptual interpretation of the collective noun, but American usage standardly treats the team as a unit. This illustrates that agreement can depend on both grammatical form and dialectal convention.

Question 3

Agreement errors are more likely to occur when a plural noun appears between a singular subject and the verb.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is one of the best-documented agreement error patterns. In 'The box of chocolates is/are heavy,' the plural 'chocolates' sits immediately adjacent to the verb, attracting incorrect plural agreement even though the head subject 'box' is singular. Distance between subject and verb increases processing difficulty. The rule itself doesn't change — identifying the true head noun becomes harder when intervening nouns are present.

Question 4

Grammatical agreement in English involves primarily number (singular vs. plural); features like person and gender do not affect agreement in any English construction.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Person agreement is visible in present-tense verbs: third-person singular subjects take -s ('she runs,' 'it matters'), while first and second person do not ('I run,' 'you run'). Gender agreement appears in pronoun choice — 'he/she/it/they' must match the antecedent's gender and number. The demonstratives 'this/that' vs. 'these/those' also mark number agreement with their noun. English has simplified agreement compared to highly inflected languages, but person and gender remain active features.

Question 5

Explain why grammatical agreement is best understood as one unified principle rather than a set of separate rules, and give an example that demonstrates this.

Model answer: Agreement is a single mechanism: grammatically linked words must share relevant feature values (number, person, gender, case). Whether the link is subject-to-verb, pronoun-to-antecedent, or demonstrative-to-noun, the same principle applies — the dependent word mirrors the features of the head. Example: in 'These students submitted their work on time,' 'these' agrees with 'students' in number, the verb 'submitted' agrees in person and number, and 'their' agrees in number and person — three distinct agreement relationships, all governed by one principle.

The unified view matters for unfamiliar cases — indefinite pronouns, relative clauses, embedded subjects — where memorized rules run out. Understanding the underlying principle (feature sharing between linked words) lets you reason through any case rather than pattern-matching against a rule list.