This apparent 'number mismatch' is a natural and logical feature of human language, and its mechanism is a subtle metonymic shift in the concepts underlying the words. Conversely, in the English language as a whole, singular verb forms can often be used with nouns ending in '-s' that were once considered plural (e.g., 'Physics is my favorite academic subject'). The plural verb forms are often used in British English with the singular forms of these count nouns (e.g., 'The team have finished the project.'). Main article: American and British English grammatical differences В§В Subject-verb agreementД¬onfusion often stems from the way that different forms of English handle agreement with collective nouns-specifically, whether or not to use the collective singular: the singular verb form with a collective noun. manДќilo 'eating utensil' > manДќilaro 'silverware', 'cutlery'.monto 'mountain' > montaro 'mountain range'.An individual mosquito is a mygga (plural: myggor), but mosquitos as a collective is mygg.Д®speranto uses the collective infix - ar- to produce a large number of derived words:.The following Swedish example has different words in the collective form and in the individual form: das Gebirge, 'group of hills, mountain range' gebergte 'mountain range'.Nearly all nouns created in that way are of neuter gender: The root word often undergoes umlaut and suffixation as well as receiving the ge- prefix. German uses the prefix ge- to create collectives. This is a productive ending, as evidenced in the recent coin, ' signage'. Though the etymology is plain to see, the derived words take on a distinct meaning. Sometimes, the relationship is easily recognizable: baggage, drainage, blockade. The English endings -age and -ade often signify a collective. Late Proto-Indo-European used the ending *t, which evolved into the English ending -th, as in 'youth'. As with all derived words, derivational collectives often differ semantically from the original words, acquiring new connotations and even new denotations.ДЄffixes Proto-Indo-European Д®arly Proto-Indo-European used the suffix *ehв‚‚ to form collective nouns, which evolved into the Latin neuter plural ending -a. Because derivation is a slower and less productive word formation process than the more overtly syntactical morphological methods, there are fewer collectives formed this way.

Morphological derivation accounts for many collective words and various languages have common affixes for denoting collective nouns. 3.1 Agreement in different forms of English.3 Metonymic merging of grammatical number.

Collective noun