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CONCORD
6----The United State(i)of to-day is nine times as large as the United States of 1800.3 'Is the United States imperialist? (Yale Review, Autumn 1951.)
The Netherlands (usually Holland, sometimes Holland and Belgium) may take either a lural a singular verb : The Netherlande washed by the North Sea. It appears that the Netherlands publis10 most books in proportion to its population.2 d. Works (= factory) may take a singular verb : Price's works was sma11.3 The decline in the knowledge of Latin is probably responsible for the use of data with a singular verb, especially inthe U.S.A.; though even a contributor to the Transactions of the (British) Philological Society (1958, p. 118) writes of 'data that dqiilnot meet this requirement'.
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752. As in other Germanic languages, we usually find a singular verb : a. after titles of books in the plural: Percy's ReliqueC ['reliks] was published in 1765.
b. after a plural noun regarded merely as a word: The Netherlands talufs`either a plural or a singular verb.
c. after a plural noun denoting time, measure, etc., preceded by a numeral, especially when there is a predicative noun expressing the same idea: Fifty years Sa long time.
In5nultiplication we find both the singular and the plural of to be or to make: ,/ Twice twelve is (are; makes/make) twenty four. -
Singular nouns denoting a number of individuals take a plural ver when the persons composing the group are thought of individually, a singular verb when the group is thought of collectively Cf. 461 and 759; also 375. The crowd were deeply affected.'
l)immense crowd was assembled. --- 1.=,My family*e)early risers.'
I
is family was an old one. (His was an old family.) The majorityof the strikers Ca already resuming work. {The Government majorityin the Lower House" perilously small.
Jespersen, MEG, II, 5.18. 2Scheurweghs, op. cit., ยง 95. Quoted by Jespersen and Kruisinga from A. Bennett, Anna of the Five Towns, Ch. III. Similarly in Ch. VIII: Mynors' works was acknowledged to be one of the best, of its size, in the district. 4Poutsma, Grammar II, Ch. XXVI, ยง 9c. 6Jespersen, MEG., II, 4.814. 6Usually called the House of Commons. 1
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