In addition, Marie's PhD research on discourse markers provided a significant intellectual input to Chapter 14. Other contributions were made by Susan Carkin, Sarah Rilling, Jennifer Rey, and Jena Burges. Also at NAU, Jenia Walter and Victoria Clark helped with the compilation of the lexical index. | Subject-verb concord 185 However none alone shows a distinct preference for singular concord None describes him herself as such in the party s official literature news Plural concord is the norm in conversation while in the written registers there is an overall preference for singular concord. Similar patterns are found for expressions containing nouns which specify a quantity or an amount with respect to a following noun such as per cent a third two thirds a the majority the bulk the rest . As with quantifiers singular concord is used with reference to uncountable nouns and singular pronouns while plural concord is used with reference to plural nouns and pronouns As to foreign trade in Eastern Europe two thirds of it is within the Comecon area news Half the group s sales are now outside Britain. About a third of products are manufactured overseas news The bulk of the proceeds are to be used to cut its borrowings news The bulk of the crop is dried. acad The rest of it is no secret fict Are you running a motel or what The rest of the aliens look at me look at each other look down at their food fict Plural verb forms are regularly found with a number of and a bunch of plural nouns So what if a bunch of men talk in loud voices and drink the night fict A number of Arab countries have condemned the UN resolution news Plural verb forms are also sometimes found with a group 0 and a series of plural noun Under a nearby tree a group of children were having their school lunch. news A series of profit downgradings were shrugged off. news However where the message focus is on the unit rather than on the individuals as with the number we regularly find singular verb forms The number of instances was surprisingly large fict The second group of books is those written by botanists. acad The same type of distinction is found with collective nouns . But whereas the plural is the more frequent option with quantifying nouns it is a far less frequent choice with collective .
