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Is this correct?:

The group of students does their work well.

The group, the subject, I consider singular. When it comes to the possessive, though, I feel like it would be wrong to refer to a group of people as "it." Would it be correct to use "their?"

Isn't there some sort of rule against referring to a group of individual people as it?

And what about this sentence:

The family returns to their house. The collective noun, family, is singular, so would it be "its" or "their?"

@Peter Shor - Thank you, but in the situation where the sentence cannot be paraphrased in another way and it must be written formally, which would be used? (this was a question on an English grammar assessment). In other words, if the possessive was the only thing that could be altered, which is more correct?

L.C.
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    AmE or BrE? In AmE, their is fine. I'll leave the discussion of British English to somebody from the U.K., but possibly it should be The group of students do their work well. – Peter Shor Apr 02 '16 at 14:16
  • You can't use "does" with "their". You might say "The students do their work well" or "The group of students does its work well." – zondo Apr 02 '16 at 14:19
  • AmE. Also, what about: – L.C. Apr 02 '16 at 14:22
  • Some might accept "The group of students do their work well" but, as @zondo says, does would clash with their – Henry Apr 02 '16 at 14:22
  • The family returns to their house. You would not use its in this situation, right? – L.C. Apr 02 '16 at 14:23
  • Related: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/39838/is-group-singular-or-plural – Henry Apr 02 '16 at 14:24
  • The first two statements in comments contradict. Perhaps Peter could show the usage being licensed in 'AmE' or zondo could show an authority forbidding 'the group does their ...' globally. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 02 '16 at 14:24
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    @Peter Shor: If "their work" was a single collective endeavour, I suppose we Brits might accept singular *does. But for most contexts we'd treat the group* as plural in contexts like this, since each individual student normally does *his* work (though I assume you'd also be happy with [Each individual student] does their* work well*). – FumbleFingers Apr 02 '16 at 14:26
  • This is the major problem with not choosing notional agreement. Here, though, I'd rephrase as I consider 'The group of students do their work well.' to be awkward. ('The staff do their work well' or {a better example} 'the staff work together well' doesn't have the partitive complication. ) 'The students in the/this group ...'. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 02 '16 at 14:28
  • Where it's a simple matter of quantification, the plural override would normally apply in BrE The group of students do their work well. – BillJ Apr 02 '16 at 14:34
  • @Edwin: It's not a problem. In AmE, their is acceptable with is. – Peter Shor Apr 02 '16 at 14:39
  • @Peter is? does? It's 'group ... does their' that's queried. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 02 '16 at 14:45
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    @Edwin: does. I don't think the family returned to its house is that bad, but the family retired to its beds really sounds wrong. I can't find a reference, though. – Peter Shor Apr 02 '16 at 14:59
  • Also consider "This group of students does their work well", which is perfectly sound. – Inazuma Apr 02 '16 at 15:28
  • Many collective references such as group and team may be treated as singular or plural, depending on context (and on UK/US considerations). – Hot Licks Apr 04 '16 at 01:03
  • If it's on an English assessment, use "the group of students does its work well." This isn't the way most Americans actually speak, but it's the grammar that (American) English assessors expect. And it's acceptable if the students are working on a group project. Hopefully, they won't ask a question like "the team was putting on _____ uniforms", where I find "its" to be totally unacceptable. – Peter Shor Apr 04 '16 at 05:08
  • If it was a British English assessment, I believe the only reasonable choice is "the group of students do their work well." – Peter Shor Apr 05 '16 at 12:08

1 Answers1

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From the paper Dialectal Variation in Number Agreement with Collective Nouns in English, by Ingrid Rodrick Beiler and Cynthia Hatch [talking about collective nouns]:

Levin (2001) concurs: “Spontaneously produced AmE speech appears to contain high proportions of plural agreement with relative and personal pronouns, whereas more formal AmE preserves low proportions of plural agreement...Verbs, on the other hand, very rarely take plural agreement in AmE” (p. 76).

That is, in informal American English, we rarely use plural verbs for nouns like family and crowd, but we are happy using plural pronouns for them. In formal American English, we are more likely to avoid using plural pronouns. But in formal writing, we have the luxury of having time to think about how to rewrite the sentence to circumvent the problem.

Levin also studied mixed agreement, where the verb is singular and the pronoun is plural:

... results from the spoken AmE corpora indicate that the collective nouns, committee, company, family, and group produce shifts “in at least two thirds of the instances” (Levin, 2001, p. 120).

So sentences like the OP's,

The group of students does their work well.
The family returns to their house.

are quite common in informal American English. It's probably a good idea to avoid them in formal writing—although you certainly don't want to use its in sentences like

The family put on their coats.

You should say the family members, or figure out some other way of paraphrasing the sentence. On the other hand, meaning matters:

The family holds its annual reunion in Annapolis.

is perfectly fine.

1 Levin, M. (2001). Agreement with Collective Nouns in English. Lund, Sweden: Lund University.

Peter Shor
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