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I didn't say that Bank of America made a policy change; I sad that they offered a loan. The persons doing the offering of said loan are low-levels, presumably a

I didn't say that Bank of America made a policy change; I sad that they offered a loan. The persons doing the offering of said loan are low-levels, presumably acting within the bounds set by company policy; however, the degree to which they adhere to the policy is not relevant. In terms of who is physically doing what, this really is a distinction without a difference, except that to your ears it sounds wrong (which is fine; that's the difference between dialects). My point is simply that in American English, there are strict rules about number. I thought that English English had similarly strict rules about number that just happened to differ from those that Americans use; apparently not. Interesting.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
adbge 16y ago
"In British English, collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is, respectively, on the body as a whole or on the individual members; compare a committee was appointed with the committee were unable to agree." From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences#Formal_and_notional_agreement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_di.... There's also some more information about the differences between the two in these articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_collective_nouns#Metonymic_merging_of_grammatical_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_collective_nouns#Metony... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesis
- carbocation 16y ago
  Fascinating; thank you for the links.