The couple is/are walking

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The couple is/are walking in the park.

Should I use 'is' or 'are'?

Many thanks.

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@Yoong Liat,

The couple is walking in the park is correct.

If the noun - like couple - is the name of a group it is regarded as singular.
Other examples would be "the class is walking...." the group is walking"
and so on...

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

Right, for American. I think this is another time when the British would treat it as a plural, and use are. They usually do that with collective nouns, but I wouldn't swear they are 100% consistant in every useage.

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@roger,

Not always, roger. Here is an example how BE is using collective nouns

Quote:

n British English, it is generally accepted that collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms depending on the context and the metonymic shift that it implies. For example, "the team is in the dressing room" (formal agreement) refers to the team as an ensemble, whilst "the team are fighting among themselves" (notional agreement) refers to the team as individuals.

Going by this example, the couple is walking, isn't it? Smile

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@CalamityJane,

Thanks. That clarifies much.

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@roger,

I'd probably treat it as a plural, even though it's ungrammatical to do so.

The couple came in after a long walk. They were very thirsty. (nb. not "It was very thirsty.")

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@McTag,

Yeah, but you're changing the context and the wording of the original text,
McTag. Don't confuse our Chinese friends here...you rebel!

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@McTag,

Quote:

I'd probably treat it as a plural, even though it's ungrammatical to do so.

The couple came in after a long walk. They were very thirsty. (nb. not "It was very thirsty.")

But you didn't treat it as a plural, Sir McTag; 'came' gives no indication of it being treated as a singular or as a plural.

The couple comes in after a long walk.

OR

The couple come in after a long walk.

If what your dialect does is what you do, it's not ungrammatical. That is the very essence of grammaticality.

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@JTT,

Quote:

But you didn't treat it as a plural, Sir McTag; 'came' gives no indication of it being treated as a singular or as a plural.

In your eagerness to prove me wrong, you misrepresented what I was trying to say. I never intended my first sentence to indicate a plural: only to say that when thinking about "the couple", I tend to think of them in most cases as a plural, two separate people.

Not in every case of course: one could imagine, for example something like

"Each couple will receive a government grant". (winter fuel allowance- UK)

"Each couple will be permitted only one child" (China population measure)

I'd be happy to think of those couples as a unit.

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

Quote:

Yeah, but you're changing the context and the wording of the original text,
McTag. Don't confuse our Chinese friends here...you rebel!

You are right. I am a little devil. Smile

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@McTag,

I'm not eager to prove you wrong, McTag. I have no desire to prove you wrong. I only seek to set the record straight, the important part being that what the people of a particular dialect say can't be ungrammatical. That is nonsensical.

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@JTT,

Quote:

I only seek to set the record straight, the important part being that what the people of a particular dialect say can't be ungrammatical. That is nonsensical.

It is? In Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example, the author contrasts the speech of the gardener with that of Her Ladyship.
Quite deliberate of course- one in Standard English, the other in heavy local dialect.

Are they both "correct"? I admit that both are valid. But surely we must adhere to a standard, when English is being taught.

1 Reply

@McTag,

Quote:

It is? In Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example, the author contrasts the speech of the gardener with that of Her Ladyship.
Quite deliberate of course- one in Standard English, the other in heavy local dialect.

Are they both "correct"? I admit that both are valid. But surely we must adhere to a standard, when English is being taught.

You're still hung up on this "correctness" thing. Both are perfectly correct. The "correctness conditions" of a given individual's dialect determine what is correct.

"correct" and "Standard" are two different things. Let's contrast Her Ladyship's speech with that of a person speaking Standard AmE. Using that contrast, does that immediately make Her Ladyship incorrect?

Quote:

Correctness conditions

I begin by taking it for granted that there are conditions we might call correctness conditions for natural languages. (Whether they are standard languages, non-standard dialects, or undescribed tribal languages
of preliterate peoples does not matter: all have correctness conditions.) And I will also assume that it is possible in principle to be perfectly explicit about such conditions. In terms of the distinction drawn familiar thirty-ﬁve years ago by John Searle,1

They are constitutive, not regulative. They do not regulate the use of the language, in the sense that one could use it either in ways that comply or in ways that don’t; they constitute the language, in the sense that not respecting them amounts to not using it at all but doing something else instead

http://people.ucsc.edu/~pullum/MLA2004.pdf

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