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In each group, which sentence(s) is(are) correct?
Group 1:
(1) She found the size of their brain had decreased.
(2) She found the size of their brains had decreased.
Group 2:
(1) Miranda focused on the behavior of urban and rural blackbirds.
(1) Miranda focused on the behaviors of urban and rural blackbirds.

Here, I am trying to gain some insight into the usage of plural when describing a particular feature of a large collection of objects. For example, one one hand, each bird had only one "size of brain", so it is reasonable to use single. However, the collection of "birds" had multiple "size of brains", so it is also possible that we should use plural here.

eigenless
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1 Answers1

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Group 1: Sentence 1 is never correct because multiple birds would have multiple brains, so the plural form (sentence 2) must be used. The aggregate number of brains is what determines the necessity of the plural, not the number of brains per object in the group.

Group 2: Sentences 2-1 and 2-2 are both correct, it depends on whether you intend to communicate that Miranda focused on a single behavior of a group of birds or on two or more behaviors of a group of birds.

The key difference for the second group is that a behavior is an abstract concept that can be shared by a group of objects so you can use the singular if you mean to refer to a single behavior that is shared or the plural to refer to a group of several behaviors that are shared or a group of several behaviors not shared by the group. For sentence 2-2, additional context would be needed to clarify if there are two or more behaviors shared across the group of birds or two or more specific behaviors, each belonging to one and only one bird in the group of birds.

Jeff Semmens
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  • Welcome to ELU. I agree with your answer. But the practice on this site is to provide sources in answers. So you may want to do that here. You can also look at the site's help center for suggestions about writing good answers. On a separate issue, you may want to clarify what you'd suggest doing with the word size in the first example. – Isabel Archer May 21 '20 at 10:53
  • Shouldn't it be "sizes of their brains". It's unlikely the brains all had the same size. – Barmar May 21 '20 at 22:31
  • No; it's recognised as acceptable to speak (as if) to an individual when addressing a group (whether assembled or dispersed). 'Hold down your protractor with your left hand and take your pencil in your right ....' (to a maths class, all right-handed) / 'Reader, I married him.' (Charlotte Bronte doubtless envisaged more than a single reader) In this case, 'generic the + singular') is fine: 'Examining the first set of birds, she found the size of the brain had decreased'. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 20 '20 at 10:34