I know I've already covered subject-verb agreement in a previous blog, but I recently had the opportunity to learn more information about it that I find interesting. So in this post, I'm going to briefly revisit the concept and share some more information about it.
To recap, subject-verb agreement is when singular subjects are paired with singular verbs and plural subjects are paired with plural verbs. Last time, I talked a bit about how prepositional phrases and words like here and there can make agreement more complicated.
Other places to watch out for include words that are sometimes plural and sometimes singular, like couple or people. Sometimes these subjects are plural, and other times they act as one unit and are considered singular. It can be difficult to determine which is which, but as Jeff Deck says in The Great Typo Hunt, you can get a hint from looking for the words the or a. The couple would be singular and a couple (as in, a couple of...) would be plural. It depends on whether the subjects are acting as one unit or not.
While I was researching subject-verb agreement, I also found several sources with widely differing opinions on it. The debate here is similar to the balance between embracing the fact that English is always changing and sticking to conventional rules of English. Some people want to change the rule to fit with its common usage, while others think that people need to follow the rule better. It's fascinating to me how the same sort of argument can play out in places that you wouldn't expect, like in a simple rule like subject-verb agreement.
Deck, Jeff, and Benjamin D. Herson. The Great Typo Hunt. Available from: Weber State University, Random House Digital Inc., 2010.
Pooley, Robert C. "Subject-Verb Agreement." American Speech, vol. 9, no. 1, 1934, pp. 31-36. Accessed 28 Mar. 2025.
Reid, Wallis. "The Communicative Function of English Verb Number." Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, vol. 29, no.4, 2011, pp. 1087--146. Accessed 4 Apr. 2025.
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