"Committee want" "family have"

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"Committee want" "family have"

by arora007 » Thu Jun 10, 2010 1:23 am
Here is a sentence from the internet resource "What are Verbs.doc"

We often use singular nouns that refer to groups of people (eg government, committee, team) as if they were plural. This is particularly true in British English. This is because we often think of the group as people, doing things that people do (eating, wanting, feeling etc).

Here are some examples:

"¢ The committee want sandwiches for lunch. They have to leave early.
"¢ My family, who don't see me often, have asked me home for Christmas.
"¢ The team hope to win next time.


can somebody plz confirm that

"Committee want" "family have" "team hope" would be correct on GMAT ?
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by RumpelThickSkin » Thu Jun 10, 2010 1:40 am
Read this

https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/06/ ... tive-nouns

For GMAT purposes, I would actually treat family as singular unless I get a clue from the sentence that it is plural.

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by Patrick_GMATFix » Thu Jun 10, 2010 10:53 am
arora007 wrote:
"¢ The committee want sandwiches for lunch. They have to leave early.
"¢ My family, who don't see me often, have asked me home for Christmas.
"¢ The team hope to win next time.


can somebody plz confirm that

"Committee want" "family have" "team hope" would be correct on GMAT ?
Hi Arora,
My sincere advice is to stop relying on this source for your GMAT verbal study. Your post illustrates why I always urge people to limit their practice to official GMAT questions (OGs, GMATPrep, GMAT Focus).

I will not claim to know British English, but that's not the English tested on the GMAT. Committee and family are singular nouns.

-Patrick
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