Singular Or A Plural Verb With A Collective Noun?

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Hi,

I've got a question. I know that you should generally use the singular form of a verb with collective nouns (e.g. My team is here. The herd is moving south.), but a few things confuse me with two specific nouns - police and family. I always see plurals with police. Why is that? Is it just an exception to the rule? And a few days ago I saw a sentence in my textbook saying 'Mark asked Jenny if all of her family were still in town.'. Now, I would have understood it if 'family' was followed by 'members', that's logical, but I don't understand the particular example. Could you please help here?

Marina
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First, it is not so general-- I believe that BrE prefers the team are here. The word police is in a different classification-- a group of nouns with no singular form, like cattle, clothes and jeans.
Family can be singular or plural, depending on how the speaker is viewing it/them-- as a single group or as several related individuals. In the sentence you give, the speaker is obviously thinking of individual members, since he said 'all of her family'.
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Dear Marina, I am glad you care a lot for English plural forms of nouns. You are probably learning English as a Second Language.
The noun police is followed by a plural verb because it is a very big group of people. For one Individual, we talk of a Policeman or a policewoman. For the word Family, I need to check with other coleagues.

Chris, a Student

Kigali Institute of Education
Faculty of Arts and Languages
English and Literature With Education (Year III)
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Is this the Marina that has written to Tyler_279? If so, could you write back?
Hi Anon For the word Family, I need to check with other coleagues. (The word 'family' can be used with a singular or plural noun, as Mister Micawber said.)
In this case you can say the same thing about the noun "army", however, this noun is almost always used as a singular noun.
Thank you!

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"all of her family were" 'of her family' is a prepositional phrase. The verb 'were' has to agree with 'all' the subject.
You're more or less correct, Anon, though "all of her family" is the subject, not just "all".

Partitive expressions like "all of her family" are called 'fused-head' constructions.

In this case, all means "all members", and all of her family then means "all members of her family".

"All members" can only be plural, so the verb too must be plural "were".

That's how the grammar works!

BillJ
I think "if" puts it in the conditional form, as in: I love him as if he were my own son. English is a very complex language with difficult rules. Good luck.
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