Main article: American and British English grammatical differences § Subject-verb agreementĬonfusion often stems from the way that different forms of English handle agreement with collective nouns-specifically, whether or not to use the collective singular: the singular verb form with a collective noun. manĝilo 'eating utensil' > manĝilaro 'silverware', 'cutlery'.monto 'mountain' > montaro 'mountain range'.An individual mosquito is a mygga (plural: myggor), but mosquitos as a collective is mygg.Įsperanto uses the collective infix - ar- to produce a large number of derived words:.The following Swedish example has different words in the collective form and in the individual form: das Gebirge, "group of hills, mountain range" gebergte 'mountain range'.Nearly all nouns created in that way are of neuter gender: The root word often undergoes umlaut and suffixation as well as receiving the ge- prefix. German uses the prefix ge- to create collectives. This is a productive ending, as evidenced in the recent coin, " signage". Though the etymology is plain to see, the derived words take on a distinct meaning. Sometimes, the relationship is easily recognizable: baggage, drainage, blockade. The English endings -age and -ade often signify a collective. Late Proto-Indo-European used the ending *t, which evolved into the English ending -th, as in "youth".
As with all derived words, derivational collectives often differ semantically from the original words, acquiring new connotations and even new denotations.Īffixes Proto-Indo-European Įarly Proto-Indo-European used the suffix *eh₂ to form collective nouns, which evolved into the Latin neuter plural ending -a.
Because derivation is a slower and less productive word formation process than the more overtly syntactical morphological methods, there are fewer collectives formed this way. Morphological derivation accounts for many collective words and various languages have common affixes for denoting collective nouns. For example, users of British English generally accept that collective nouns take either singular or plural verb forms depending on context and the metonymic shift that it implies. ĭifferent forms of English handle verb agreement with collective count nouns differently. Other examples come from popular culture such as a group of owls, which is called a "parliament". For example, "pride" as a term of venery always refers to lions, never to dogs or cows. Some collective nouns are specific to one kind of thing, especially terms of venery, which identify groups of specific animals. For example, the collective noun "group" can be applied to people ("a group of people"), or dogs ("a group of dogs"), or objects ("a group of stones"). Most collective nouns in everyday speech are not specific to one kind of thing. In linguistics, a collective noun is a word referring to a collection of things taken as a whole.
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