Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
NUMBER 1
is a grammatical concept important in English usage because Standard English demands agreement or concord in number between pronouns and their antecedents and between nouns serving as subjects and the verbs in their predicates. Singular number involves one person, thing, or concept, and plural number involves two or more. Nouns and pronouns display number through their inflections and forms: cat, satisfaction, I, and she are singular; cats, satisfactions, we, and they are plural (see PERSONAL PRONOUNS; PLURALS OF NOUNS). Regular verbs have only one number-distinctive form, that for the third person singular present tense (John swims). (Be and have are a bit more complicated.) Inadvertent faulty agreement between subject and verb is usually a shibboleth, betraying a user of Vulgar English. But compare NOTIONAL AGREEMENT.
