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Subject Verb Agreement

In this video, you’ll learn about subject-verb agreement in English. First, we will review the basics of subject-verb agreement, and then we will look at some common causes of confusion:

• distance
• compound subjects
• collective nouns
• singular indefinite pronouns, and
• countability.

Don’t worry about these grammar terms—we will explain them as we go.

Basics

Subject-verb agreement’ means that the subject of a sentence (such as “I” or “she”) agrees with the main verb of the sentence. The basic principle is actually quite simple, as long as you can identify the subject. This table will remind you of first, second, third person as well as singular and plural.

The table on the screen shows two examples of the simple present tense. Notice how the base form of the verb changes for the third person singular, he, she or it.

This rule also applies in the present perfect where we choose ‘have’ or ‘has’ depending on the subject. It also applies in continuous tenses such as the present continuous or past continuous where we have to choose the correct form of the verb ‘be’. If you find it difficult to decide which form of the verb to use, a good tip is to substitute the noun for a pronoun. For example, for ‘the research’, use ‘it’. For ‘the authors’ use ‘they’.

Let’s practise that. What pronouns could you use in the following sentences? For ‘your assignments’ we could use the pronoun ‘they’; for É«ÇéÍøÕ¾, ‘it’, and for “Sarah and I”, ‘we’. In the last example, ‘studying’ is a gerund. It looks like a verb but it is working as a noun and we can use the pronoun ‘it’.

Did you get them right? If so, then you shouldn’t have much difficulty with subject-verb agreement in basicsentences. Of course, not all sentences are this simple. Let’s look at some more complicated situations.

Distance

One of the most common challenges is the distance between the subject and the main verb. For example, “Newton’s first law of motion states that a body in motion stays in motion.” In this sentence, even though the noun ‘motion’ is closer to the main verb ‘states’, the subject is the noun ‘law’, which appears earlier in the sentence. Sometimes you need to look back in the sentence to identify the subject; don’t assume that the subject is the noun just before the verb. If you find it hard to identify main verbs and subjects, try the exercises below.

Compound subjects

Now let’s look at compound subjects - that is, where a sentence has two subjects. For example, “The tutor and the student are discussing the lesson”. In this sentence, ‘the tutor’ and ‘the student’ together mean ‘they’ so the verb needs to agree with ‘they’. So we say ‘are discussing’, not ‘is discussing’.

This next example combines a positive and a negative subject. With compound subjects like this, the verb agrees with the positive subject.

Collective nouns

Next, let’s look at Collective nouns. These are words like ‘group’, ‘crowd’, ‘team’ and ‘committee’. These are words that refer to things that have been grouped together but, grammatically, they are considered as one thing like ‘it’. So we could say:

“The group meets every Tuesday at the Multifaith Centre.”

“The committee has approved the funding for the event.”

Singular Indefinite Pronouns

Now let’s turn our attention to singular indefinite pronouns. These include:

• another
• one, everyone
• anyone, anybody, anything
• everyone, everybody, everything
• each
• no one, nobody, nothing
• someone, somebody, something
• either and neither.

Because these words refer to only one thing, the verb should take the third person singular form. In other words, it works like the pronoun ‘it’:

“There are four factors. Each affects the pricing of the product significantly.”

This is still true when there is distance between the subject and verb as we saw earlier:

“Each of the four factors affects the pricing of the product significantly.”

Notice that the verb ‘affect’ takes the third person singular form to agree with ‘each’ rather than ‘factors’.

Countability

Another area affecting subject-verb agreement is countability. If a word is uncountable, the related verb will be in the third person singular form like ‘it’.

For example:

The information in this book is irrelevant. BUT

The students in this class are punctual.

This is still true when quantifiers are used:

All of the information in this book is irrelevant.

All of the students in this class are punctual.

For more on this topic, see the video on countable and uncountable nouns.

This video has introduced you to how to recognise the subject of a sentence, the form of the subject, and some of the challenges with subject-verb agreement. Now try some of the exercises below.