Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I was referring to essel’s OP (particularly the part in parentheses):
So – to sum up: Blaster Master felt that “Ford’s is much more generous” could be ambiguous.
You said that the ambiguity only arose in British English, where the Ford company is commonly referred to as “Ford’s”
I pointed out that Ford is not commonly referred to in Britain as “Ford’s”. It is true that there is a tendency in Britain to add the possessive “’s” to company names, but not in the case of Ford.
You correctly pointed out that, in the case of Ford, no ambiguity arises in the formulation that Blaster Master worried about – even in British English.
However: the sentence that originally gave essell the heebiejeebies was about some company other than Ford. One that may well, for all we know, commonly get saddled with a possessive “s” in British English. And so the ambiguity (possibly) returns, and since British English is the context of the original sentence, we’re all right back where we started.
There’s a company policy against installing software on the work computers else I’d use firefox like I do at home. I love the spellchecker.
Actually there’s a company policy against using non-work sites like this one on the work computers.
Sometimes it’s good to be the boss. I just don’t want to leave evidence of my wrongdoing as even the boss must answer to someone
Well, for the sake of removing ambiguity and as I’m not at work right now, the Original sentence was "Orange are much more generous"
Would you say “Orange fired its CEO.” or “Orange fired their CEO”? “Orange play fair” or “Orange plays fair”. I fail to see how anyone, even Brits, could think of a collective noun as plural.
I also fail to see how “Ford’s is …” is not ambiguous. Ford’s what? Sure, “policy” is implied, but that’s exactly what makes it ambiguous- the implication. I never would have known what we were talking about unless the OP told us.
Lastly, there’s nothing wrong with “much more”. It’s totally different than “a little more” and “slightly more”.
I’m guessing you think these are stronger examples for your point of view, but I think they’re weaker. The plurals in these are merely part of a name. You’re still not talking about a collection of leaves, you’re talking about a singular team called “The Toronto Maple Leafs”. Hooters is a restaurant. Heathers is a movie. The Toronto Maple Leafs is a hockey team. The Gunners is (so I’m told) a football team.
How come you won’t answer any of my hypotheticals?
I’m not sure which hypotheticals you mean. But I’m really somewhere in the middle of this argument, as far as my personal usage is concerned: I would say:
The Gunners are a football team.
but
Arsenal is a football team.
(For those who aren’t familiar with soccer, “the Gunners” is another name for Arsenal – and note that " ‘The Gunners’ " became a singular subject there, because it was a quoted phrase.)
As background, I can see both sides because I was born in Australia, have lived most of my life in Australia, but I lived in England about 8 years as a child.
The British usage is about groups of people, such as corporations, sporting teams and governments. It’s not about other collectivities, such as marbles, leaves or body parts. So (at least to me) “The bag of marbles are …” and “The pile of leaves are …” sound just wrong. – though I suspect that they are still possibilities for some people.
In addition, the same noun can be singular or plural depending on what it stands for:
The sentence is not going to be used devoid of any context. Of course he had to tell us what it was about. And, of course, the original sentence is going to be used in a context in which people already know what he’s talking about
How about dead people? “The stack of bodies is getting quite tall” or “The stack of bodies are getting quite tall”? If I’m ever involved in mass murder in the UK, I want to make sure and use the proper grammar.
ETA to robcaro: on mine, it’s under Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Browsing -> Check my spelling as I type.
There’s a grammatical rule for this isn’t there - metonymy? Whereby organisations (singular) can be characterised as collections of their employees (plural). Or am I thinking of synecdoche? Out of my depth here…
The example that gets me is “The couple (singular) is unable to come to work today. It’s child is ill.” That just doesn’t work at all, but saying “Their child is ill” has to be wrong because couple is singular. Hmmm.
Giles: What would be the UK equivalent of “Manchester United is getting larger,” meaning the team is gaining new members (as opposed to the members individually getting larger)? Would “Manchester United are getting larger” imply one or the other, or would it be ambiguous?
“Manchester United are getting larger” sounds reasonable to me – though it’s ambiguous, and (of course) they can only have 11 players on the field, so the team can’t get bigger in that sense.
On the other hard, if the Queen were to appoint extra ministers, it would seem odd to say, “The cabinet are getting larger”: it would be “The cabinet is getting larger”, although you might also say, “The cabinet are debating the national health system.”
However, I’m not really the best source on the subtleties of British usage. I’ll be interested in hearing what true Brits have to say on this.
:smack: this entire time I didn’t even look at your location. You just seemed to be representing the british point of view, so I figured you were british.
