A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

90 Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrases

The examples in [iii] are cases in which variation would be less likely. In [iiia],
the property of consisting entirely of men can only apply to the board as a whole; it
can't apply to any individual member of the board, so a plural verb is much less
likely (though not all BrE speakers would dismiss %The board consist entirely of
men as impossible). In [iiib], by contrast, the property of being forty or older can
apply only to the individual members of the crew, not the crew as a whole, and the
adjunct all reinforces the focus on the individuals; so [iiib] with its plural agreement
is much more likely than %The crew is all over fo rty (though in AmE the latter might
nonetheless occur).

Any, no, none, either, neither

We also find alternation between singular and plural verb agreement in examples
like [22]:

[22] a. [None of the objections] was valid.

ii a. [Neither of them] seems valid.

b. [None of the objections] were valid.

b. [Neither of them] seem valid.

Subjects with any, no, and none occur freely with either singular or plural agree­
ment. With neither, and even more with either, singular agreement is usual; plural
agreement is informal, and condemned by prescriptivists. The difference is that any
and no can function as determiner to both singular and plural nouns: both No objec­
tion was valid and No objections were valid are grammatical. Either and neither
occur only with singulars: Neither objection was valid is grammatical, but *Neither
objections were valid is definitely not.

(^3) Determiners and determinatives
The determiner position in an NP is usually filled by one of two kinds
of expression.

• In all the examples so far it has been a determinative, and some of these can be
  accompanied by their own modifiers, making a determinative phrase, abbrevi­
  ated DP.
  '", In addition, the determiner may have the form of a genitive NP.

Examples, with the determiners underlined, are given in [23]:

[23] DETERMINATIVE
DP
GENITIVE NP

the city

almost all politicians

her income

some rotten eggs

very fe w new books

the senator's young son

In this section we focus on determinatives and DPs. Genitive determiners are dis­
cussed in §9.1.
The determiner is generally an obligatory element with count singular common
nouns, as discussed in connection with [14-16] above. It is, by contrast, incompat­
ible with pronouns: we have l am ready, not *The I am ready, and so on.