I have not retained much of my education regarding the rules of English usage. Still, I suspect that the answer to this question will be so simple and obvious that I’ll strike my forehead and mutter, “Well, of course.”
Today I typed up an informal flyer announcing the re-opening of a club. The copy style was goofy and flowery. It began thusly:
May it please the court, Joe’s Cafe seeks to operate as a Private Club, featuring:
The finest local music
Social intercourse
Conviviality
…and whatever undertakings its membership deems of value to the larger community.
The question is… deems of value
or deem of value
?
“Its membership”, like “committee,” “legislature.” amd a number of other words. are treated as collective singulars in American usage – the group, taken as a unit, concurs in a single decision. In British English, the sense is often taken into account: “the committee votes to recommend passage of the bill”, but “the committee are divided on its exact contents.” In the OP, it is the membership, taken as a collective unit, which deems things of value. Individual members may well deem otherwise, but the membership as a whole acts as a single entity.
It’s my understanding that in British English, the sense is not taken into account: they simply don’t recognize collective nouns as singular. “Queen are beginning their European tour” is a sentence I saw once in a fanclub mailing (it was the 80s, OK?), and ever since then I’ve noticed how universally the British seem to pluralize the verb for any collective noun.
Technically, these pluralisations with collective nouns are not correct in British English. Just because they’re commonly used doesn’t make them right.
Except that I think a BrE soeaker might have used “members” rather than “membership” here.
I realise the language is mock-pretentious, but it’s my impression that using “membership”, “partnership”. etc in a context where it means “members”, “partners”, etc is more of an AmE thing. Likewise “deem”. I think a BrE speaker wanting to be mock-pretentious would be more likely to use “determine”.
No, the fact that they’re technically correct makes them correct. There are two types of agreement possible based on the context of the usage of the collective noun: formal and notional.
Formal is the only one accepted in American English, but notional agreement is very common in British English (see lissener’s example re Queen) and not a corruption or nonstandard usage or anything like that. It’s been accepted by the OED since the 2nd Edition.
