Subject and Verb Agreement - Questions with collective nouns

[subhakam]

Greetings GMAT masters! I have a conceptual question regarding subject -verb agreement we so often encounter in sentence correction questions. Based on what i have read and followed so far, Collective nouns such as group, committee, army, orchestra etc are always singular.
E.g. - The ARMY IS marching or The orchestra was late to the show etc

Can collective nouns be plural when we use "A" instead of "The".
For e.g - A group of students ARE marching vs A group of students is marching?

My question invariably comes to collective nouns and distinguishing the singularity/plurality when "A" vs "The" is utilized. I think when "A" is used it refers to plural as in the case of A number of dogs escaped or An amount of etc


All help greatly appreciated!!
Thanks in advance.
Subhakam

[brianlange77]

Greetings GMAT masters! I have a conceptual question regarding subject -verb agreement we so often encounter in sentence correction questions. Based on what i have read and followed so far, Collective nouns such as group, committee, army, orchestra etc are always singular.
E.g. - The ARMY IS marching or The orchestra was late to the show etc

Can collective nouns be plural when we use "A" instead of "The".
For e.g - A group of students ARE marching vs A group of students is marching?

My question invariably comes to collective nouns and distinguishing the singularity/plurality when "A" vs "The" is utilized. I think when "A" is used it refers to plural as in the case of A number of dogs escaped or An amount of etc


All help greatly appreciated!!
Thanks in advance.
Subhakam

Good question -- but I need to challenge your assumption. "A vs. The" doesn't matter in collective nouns.

e.g. An army is approaching. Just because it uses "an" instead of "the" doesn't change the sentence in anyway... does it?

Thoughts?

-Brian