'forget your English grammar'

[johnfoyle]

The Irishman's Diary column in today's Irish Times features Elvis . Frank McNally writes -

(extract)

ELVIS COSTELLO shares some of the blame. “Oliver’s Army is here to stay,” he sang a generation ago, in the chorus of one of his catchier numbers. Then, before you could blink, he added:“Oliver’s Army are on their way.” Make up your mind, Elvis, I remember thinking, as I studied grammar for my Leaving Cert English exam.

Even allowing that the army had mounted a major recruitment campaign between the first and second lines, there seemed no -good reason for it to change from a singular entity to a plural one in so short a time.
But it did, thereby penetrating the language’s defences at a weak point. Oliver’s army has/have since poured through the line, sowing confusion in its/their wake. The result, nearly 30 years on, is that nobody seems to know whether anything is single or plural any more. All right, I’m not seriously blaming Elvis Costello. Disregard for the rules of English is a long and honourable radition in rock music. And if he didn’t do it deliberately, he was probably just reflecting a habit that already existed.

[sexysadie7]

Discretionary plurals (from wikipedia)

A number of words like army, company, crowd, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, and party may refer either to a single entity or the members of the set that compose it. Thus, as H. W. Fowler describes, in British English they are "treated as singular or plural at discretion"; Fowler notes that occasionally a "delicate distinction" is made possible by discretionary plurals: "The Cabinet is divided is better, because in the order of thought a whole must precede division; and The Cabinet are agreed is better, because it takes two or more to agree."[12] Also in British English, names of towns and countries take plural verbs when they refer to sports teams but singular verbs when they refer to the actual place: England are playing Germany tonight refers to a football game, but England is the most populous country of the United Kingdom refers to the country. In North American English, such words are invariably treated as singular.

call it creative license, i guess. still, it's nothing like my fave grammar mistake in rock: "do wah diddy diddy"'s lyric: "i knew we was falling in love..." i have heard ellie greenwich, the brill building songwriter who wrote this (and who was quite a grammarian herself), still cringes when she hears it! i'm sure she can forgive manfred mann...that song has to pay the bills!

[Otis Westinghouse]

Mistake or regional variant?

Frank McNally refers to 'disregard for the rules' without saying which is 'correct'. As the wikipedia entry shows, both are, and that's why there's nothing grammatically dissonant about Oliver's Army. As Frank says, he's reflecting a habit that exists. I've spent my entire working life immersed in grammar and language and it's never occurred to me that he was using both forms in those two lines. It's a nice example, in fact, of how both are admissible. Is Frank a bit of an old fart? My wife's father's family has a lot of McNallys in it, so maybe they're related.

[charliestumpy]

I am sad enough to understand perfectly the 'reasons for grammar', and rules/practices evolve, even if I don't like bad replacing good.

Using e.g. 'Oliver's army' as subject of plural verb correctly grammatically implies that not all of the members of the army were united in a common resolve.

DPAM is subtly correct.

Bloody great song/album.

[krm]

...I guess that is (are?) why we never got the lyrics in the first place back in 1979...

[pophead2k]

Another interesting and enlightening article on grammar and five top grammar 'myths'.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14636

[Otis Westinghouse]

Nice stuff and quite right. Descriptive not prescriptive grammar. The idiocy over split infinitives, etc. is enough to truly make one puke.

[pophead2k]

Well split, sir.