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Familiar examples are 'police' and 'people', apart from the large set of collective nouns like 'committee', 'government', 'family', 'mob'.
Incorrect use of collective nouns was found to be the easiest detectable error, followed by word order distortions.
Concord with collective nouns revisited.
The plural concord here may also be reinforced by notional concord, since board, as a collectivenoun, can be notionally plural.
In the above examples the reciprocal takes a singular collectivenoun as its antecedent.
In other words, the base is no longer a collectivenoun when the plural marker is added.
Accordingly, compatibility with a plural verb will no longer be considered to be a necessary characteristic of a collectivenoun.
But what to use for the collectivenoun?
It is not so much a plural but a collectivenoun, and can you not perfectly well have, "livestock, animal" and the singular after it?
From the
Hansard archive