Number puzzles

Abstract

Number in English is a puzzling phenomenon – not least for foreign learners, and often also for those who have to teach them. Avowedly ‘Standard’ forms of English are in something of an in-between stage. The so-called ‘singular/plural’ distinction is only partly a question of distinguishing one as opposed to more than one, while number agreement in the verb is inconsistent and not always predictable from the apparent number of the subject – as in The team was[?]/were[?] unhappy about losing the game. While some Germanic languages, and some varieies of English, have altogether discarded verbal agreement in number, standard varieties of English redundantly retain traces of it: He was, and they were, happy to hear the news. As Jespersen has put it (1979:216), ‘No distinction is made in verbs between the two numbers except in the present tense and there it is found in the third person only…. [I]n the preterit we have the solitary example was, plural were….’