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Could that be a regional-dialect difference? It sounds fairly ordinary to my British-English side.
Plural problems
- Thread starter MJRevell
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Could that be a regional-dialect difference? It sounds fairly ordinary to my British-English side.
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That might be it. Canadian English is a cross-polination of American and British English philandering with the French. Also why I never recognised "Paddywagon" as a reference to the Irish, me thinks.
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All these dialects cross-pollinate in all kinds of weird ways. That's why British get their post from the Royal Mail, while Americans' mail is delivered by the Post Office.
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Any question regarding this sort of singular/plural thing can easily be answered by deleting the prepositional phrase and seeing if it's correct.
If you have "a range are available" it's incorrect, as it would be "ranges are available".
Works every time.
If you have "a range are available" it's incorrect, as it would be "ranges are available".
Works every time.
I think the rule is geography-specific. For the Brits, you cut out "A range of" and you will get it correct because you are talking about the light lunches and not the range. For Americans, you cut out the prepositional phrase to check for correctness.
I think that is the lesson in this thread.
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Forgive me, but that's not actually the case. Even in British English, range is a singular noun referring to the selection, and the prepositional phrase is the correct thing to cut out to check.
The difference between the cultures about "team" or "committee" as collective nouns is a side-issue. "Range" does not fall into that category.
In both American and British English, the correct phrasing is "A range of light lunches is available."