Date:  Tue, 7 Mar 1995 13:24:49 +0000

From:  "dbritain[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]popserver.essex.ac.uk..." <dbritain[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ESSEX.AC.UK>

Subject: Re; British Plurals



I think Brits would have plural verbs forms for any country which had a

plural in its name: so, the United States, the Phillipines; the Seychelles;

the Maldives; the United Arab Emirates and the Federated States of

Micronesia HAVE not HAS been amassing THEIR troops ready for an invasion (or

whatever).



'Trades Union' sounds posh to me - my students and I all agree that Trade

Union is far more normal.



As for whether a trade union is followed by a plural or not - well, I dug

out an example from last weekend's Times Higher Education Supplement:



'Lecturers' union Natfhe has been scathing about franchises'



That was the only one I could find, but related: 'The T(ransport

and)G(eneral)W(orkers')U(nion) said they had consulted their members' (this

example was from a different newspaper).



Intuitively however my students felt that unions could be followed, in

speech, by either a singular or a plural verb form.



What, by the way, is 'loosemeat'?!



Dave Britain

Dept of Language and Linguistics

Essex University

Colchester CO4 3SQ

UK