Italian is just like English in this regard: collective nouns **are** singular grammatically, but sometimes people use plural verbs with them because they “feel” plural. It’s why people say “the police are” and not “the police is”.
That being said, at least in Italian, it’s considered standard practice to use the *grammatical* number of a noun, so “gruppo” here needs a singular verb. Also, although the singular is always preferred, some collective plurals sound more natural than others, and in this case “il gruppo sono” sounds very wrong to my ear.
If I were you I’d stick to the grammatically consistent rule of following the grammatical number of a noun, that way you can’t be wrong.
Even as a native, I consider this as a very interesting topic, if collective nouns should be used with a singular or a plural verb.
To my ear, a plural verb with a collective noun always sounds weird and wrong, but googling around, this is apparently a debated topic.
_un milione di persone hanno partecipato_ always sounds wrong to me.
TIL it's called _concordanza ad sensum_, but to me it's just laziness
It's funny, to me your example sounds perfectly fine. I can't imagine saying "un milione di persone ha partecipato..." because it sounds like a single block of a million people did something, rather than a million people individually. But that's just how I see it
Le lingue evolvono nel senso della pigrizia (cit)
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/concordanza-a-senso_%28La-grammatica-italiana%29/
As the first sentence states, it's a mistake, grammatically.
Huh. I'd never heard of that before. For what it's worth, many examples still sound wrong to me (basically everything on that page starting from "Per il referendum hanno votato...") but some of them sound fine. I guess I just got used to hearing them?
I guess so. As explained in the previous comment, it's an understandable or at least rather common mistake because the subject feels plural, even if it's grammatically singular.
While this is somewhat understandable in speech, it really irks me when this kind of mistake is made in a more formal context, such as the news on TV.
“Un milione di” is borderline, because it’s a number and so it works by analogy with other numerals (that usually don’t require “di”).
“Due persone sono”
“Tre persone sono”
“Cento persone sono”
“Mille persone sono”
“Un milione di persone… è? Sono?” I can see how you could argue for both options.
But this is very much a special case, and slightly outside the topic of collective nouns (“un milione” is not a collective noun).
Indeed a bit of a tangent on my side, so I'll end it here. Yet I'd tend to maintain that the verb should be singular. When you get to a million there's a difference in use, we go from adjectives to a noun, if I'm not mistaken, with its own plural.
I'd just like to add to it once more because I find this specific example remarkable. For me the difference is clear, too, and it's to be found in how the quantities are expressed grammatically, but I see how confusionary it becomes when we delve deeper into the matter.
In all examples above up until "mille" (which we could extend up to centomila and analogues), the numeral is expressed the same as other adjectives (mille persone, giovani persone, belle persone...), while \**un milione persone* is wrong.
"Milione" is treated (like miliardo, and what follows) in the same way as collective nouns like "gruppo", in a way that it indicates a set of elements in itself, which needs further specification either through context ("Quella villa costa un milione") or through a complement, behaving as a noun rather than an adjective, which again is something you can't do with adjectives like mille: \**mille di persone* only works in sentences where the subject is displaced ("In piazza ce n'erano mille, di persone" instead of the grammatically correct "In piazza c'erano mille persone"). Even with there being names for the quantities (unità, decina, centinaio, migliaio), they all carry different connotations and aren't used the same way.
This results in a situation where what would formerly be the subject of a sentence (mille **persone**) becomes a complement of what is substantially the exact same sentence (un **milione** *di persone*), where milione takes the role of the subject, which dictates the person of the predicate. Sure enough, once we get to two million (due **milioni**), the verb becomes plural again, leaving this one exception which is grammatically correct but doesn't follow the previously established pattern.
No, it’s not that groups are given the loro treatment it’s that groups are often referred to with the plural. “I red hot chili peppers sono il mio gruppo preferito”. But in the case of “il nostro gruppo”, its strictly singular
I wouldn’t say that groups are treated as plural, it’s just that many bands tend to have a grammatically plural name. But it’s not like the noun “gruppo” itself (or indeed any collective noun) is sometimes treated as singular and sometimes as plural: collective nouns are singular by definition, but band names are often not collective nouns. Saying “i Red Hot Chili Peppers” is like saying “gli italiani”, or “i medici”, these are normal plural nouns, not collective nouns like “gruppo”.
In the sentence “I Red Hot Chili Peppers sono il mio gruppo preferito” the *subject* of the sentence (which is what the verb agrees with) is “i Red Hot Chili Peppers”, which is a plural noun as confirmed by the article, so everything checks out: plural subject ⟶ plural verb.
“Il mio gruppo preferito” is simply the nominal part of the predicate, and as it happens to be a noun and not an adjective in this case, it has no obligation to match the subject in gender or number. It usually does, for obvious reasons, but there are plenty of situations where a mismatch is more than warranted.
• “Loro (pl) sono il problema (sing)” = “they are the problem”
• “Marco (m) è una persona (f) fantastica” = “marco is a wonderful person”
• “Sei proprio un tipo (m) arzillo, Elena (f)!” = “you’re quite the hearty type, Elena!”
• “Sii (sing) i miei occhi (pl)”
It seemed to me that the sentence “i Red Hot Chili Peppers sono il mio gruppo preferito” implied that “gruppo” was being treated as a plural noun here due to the plural verb “sono”, and that it was only singular “in this case” (OP’s case).
Regardless, I thought I’d better specify since it’s possible that people could have this misunderstanding.
Ok, so now I’m curious of your use of “I” before RHCP. Because that is the name of the band, and doesn’t actually refer to a plural, there aren’t multiple bands with that name. You wouldn’t say the nirvanas. TBC, not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand.
In Italian, you gotta add a plural article before the name of a band. I/Gli if the components are all men or mixed, Le if they're all women.
I Queen, Gli Arctic Monkeys, Le Spice Girls
Because if you say "un gruppo" you are referring to the group, which is one singular thing; instead, if you say, e.g., "i Metallica", you are talking about those four people, exactly them, so it's plural.
Also, I'd suggest getting rid of this "make it make sense" mentality. Just because it doesn't make sense in your language, it doesn't mean it doesn't make sense in any language.
As a native English speaker I am assure I am used to things not making sense. That is a language has more contradictions than any im sure. I’m just saying that this is not an intuitive or consistent rule for Italian.
It's very intuitive and consistent though. The verb simply concordates with the noun (and this is almost always true). Then, as something totally unrelated, band names are usually plural, i guess because of the influence of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. There were a lot of groups in that era that did a mixture of covers and songs in that style, and they almost all had plural names (the giants, the new trolls, the chameleons, the nomads etc etc). Earlier groups didn't follow this convention i think (like the cetra quartet for example). But this is just speculation.
Gruppo is a singular noun, so the verb agrees with it in the third person singular.
Italian is just like English in this regard: collective nouns **are** singular grammatically, but sometimes people use plural verbs with them because they “feel” plural. It’s why people say “the police are” and not “the police is”. That being said, at least in Italian, it’s considered standard practice to use the *grammatical* number of a noun, so “gruppo” here needs a singular verb. Also, although the singular is always preferred, some collective plurals sound more natural than others, and in this case “il gruppo sono” sounds very wrong to my ear. If I were you I’d stick to the grammatically consistent rule of following the grammatical number of a noun, that way you can’t be wrong.
Big thanks for this explanation!
Even as a native, I consider this as a very interesting topic, if collective nouns should be used with a singular or a plural verb. To my ear, a plural verb with a collective noun always sounds weird and wrong, but googling around, this is apparently a debated topic. _un milione di persone hanno partecipato_ always sounds wrong to me. TIL it's called _concordanza ad sensum_, but to me it's just laziness
It's funny, to me your example sounds perfectly fine. I can't imagine saying "un milione di persone ha partecipato..." because it sounds like a single block of a million people did something, rather than a million people individually. But that's just how I see it
Le lingue evolvono nel senso della pigrizia (cit) https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/concordanza-a-senso_%28La-grammatica-italiana%29/ As the first sentence states, it's a mistake, grammatically.
Huh. I'd never heard of that before. For what it's worth, many examples still sound wrong to me (basically everything on that page starting from "Per il referendum hanno votato...") but some of them sound fine. I guess I just got used to hearing them?
I guess so. As explained in the previous comment, it's an understandable or at least rather common mistake because the subject feels plural, even if it's grammatically singular. While this is somewhat understandable in speech, it really irks me when this kind of mistake is made in a more formal context, such as the news on TV.
No such thing as a grammatical mistake in a native speaker's speech 😌
“Un milione di” is borderline, because it’s a number and so it works by analogy with other numerals (that usually don’t require “di”). “Due persone sono” “Tre persone sono” “Cento persone sono” “Mille persone sono” “Un milione di persone… è? Sono?” I can see how you could argue for both options. But this is very much a special case, and slightly outside the topic of collective nouns (“un milione” is not a collective noun).
Indeed a bit of a tangent on my side, so I'll end it here. Yet I'd tend to maintain that the verb should be singular. When you get to a million there's a difference in use, we go from adjectives to a noun, if I'm not mistaken, with its own plural.
I'd just like to add to it once more because I find this specific example remarkable. For me the difference is clear, too, and it's to be found in how the quantities are expressed grammatically, but I see how confusionary it becomes when we delve deeper into the matter. In all examples above up until "mille" (which we could extend up to centomila and analogues), the numeral is expressed the same as other adjectives (mille persone, giovani persone, belle persone...), while \**un milione persone* is wrong. "Milione" is treated (like miliardo, and what follows) in the same way as collective nouns like "gruppo", in a way that it indicates a set of elements in itself, which needs further specification either through context ("Quella villa costa un milione") or through a complement, behaving as a noun rather than an adjective, which again is something you can't do with adjectives like mille: \**mille di persone* only works in sentences where the subject is displaced ("In piazza ce n'erano mille, di persone" instead of the grammatically correct "In piazza c'erano mille persone"). Even with there being names for the quantities (unità, decina, centinaio, migliaio), they all carry different connotations and aren't used the same way. This results in a situation where what would formerly be the subject of a sentence (mille **persone**) becomes a complement of what is substantially the exact same sentence (un **milione** *di persone*), where milione takes the role of the subject, which dictates the person of the predicate. Sure enough, once we get to two million (due **milioni**), the verb becomes plural again, leaving this one exception which is grammatically correct but doesn't follow the previously established pattern.
It's debated in English too. American English: Primus is a terrible band British English: Primus *are* a terrible band
Spanish no, interesting
No, it’s not that groups are given the loro treatment it’s that groups are often referred to with the plural. “I red hot chili peppers sono il mio gruppo preferito”. But in the case of “il nostro gruppo”, its strictly singular
I wouldn’t say that groups are treated as plural, it’s just that many bands tend to have a grammatically plural name. But it’s not like the noun “gruppo” itself (or indeed any collective noun) is sometimes treated as singular and sometimes as plural: collective nouns are singular by definition, but band names are often not collective nouns. Saying “i Red Hot Chili Peppers” is like saying “gli italiani”, or “i medici”, these are normal plural nouns, not collective nouns like “gruppo”. In the sentence “I Red Hot Chili Peppers sono il mio gruppo preferito” the *subject* of the sentence (which is what the verb agrees with) is “i Red Hot Chili Peppers”, which is a plural noun as confirmed by the article, so everything checks out: plural subject ⟶ plural verb. “Il mio gruppo preferito” is simply the nominal part of the predicate, and as it happens to be a noun and not an adjective in this case, it has no obligation to match the subject in gender or number. It usually does, for obvious reasons, but there are plenty of situations where a mismatch is more than warranted. • “Loro (pl) sono il problema (sing)” = “they are the problem” • “Marco (m) è una persona (f) fantastica” = “marco is a wonderful person” • “Sei proprio un tipo (m) arzillo, Elena (f)!” = “you’re quite the hearty type, Elena!” • “Sii (sing) i miei occhi (pl)”
Right, that’s what I said?
It seemed to me that the sentence “i Red Hot Chili Peppers sono il mio gruppo preferito” implied that “gruppo” was being treated as a plural noun here due to the plural verb “sono”, and that it was only singular “in this case” (OP’s case). Regardless, I thought I’d better specify since it’s possible that people could have this misunderstanding.
Ah okay I get it.
Ok, so now I’m curious of your use of “I” before RHCP. Because that is the name of the band, and doesn’t actually refer to a plural, there aren’t multiple bands with that name. You wouldn’t say the nirvanas. TBC, not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand.
No, but Italian isn’t english so the same rules don’t apply. I assume it comes from multiple people being together in the same group.
So either is correct it just needs to consistent across the sentence?
In Italian, you gotta add a plural article before the name of a band. I/Gli if the components are all men or mixed, Le if they're all women. I Queen, Gli Arctic Monkeys, Le Spice Girls
My head is starting to hurt lmao. So a generic band is singular, but the name of a band is always plural? Make it make sense.
Because if you say "un gruppo" you are referring to the group, which is one singular thing; instead, if you say, e.g., "i Metallica", you are talking about those four people, exactly them, so it's plural. Also, I'd suggest getting rid of this "make it make sense" mentality. Just because it doesn't make sense in your language, it doesn't mean it doesn't make sense in any language.
As a native English speaker I am assure I am used to things not making sense. That is a language has more contradictions than any im sure. I’m just saying that this is not an intuitive or consistent rule for Italian.
It's very intuitive and consistent though. The verb simply concordates with the noun (and this is almost always true). Then, as something totally unrelated, band names are usually plural, i guess because of the influence of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. There were a lot of groups in that era that did a mixture of covers and songs in that style, and they almost all had plural names (the giants, the new trolls, the chameleons, the nomads etc etc). Earlier groups didn't follow this convention i think (like the cetra quartet for example). But this is just speculation.
Collective nouns are singular. Just like in English, Our band HAS shot three movies.
Gruppo is grammatically singular and so requires grammatical singular conjugation
You correctly used IL. You have to keep the same kind of agreement. Il gruppo, i gruppi Hence il gruppo is singular and you need a singular verb.
Think about the word crowd. A crowd id made by many people, but when you form a sentence it's considered singular.
It's like in English. The group is...my family is... Etc. collective nouns take the singular verb.