Sentence: The couple who live next door always watch television.

[Jemaiorino]

Dear Mr. Alan

I've read your lesson about the relative pronouns and was intrigued by this sentence: «The couple who live next door always watch television.»

I thought tha "couple" is a singular name, so the verbs should be "lives" amd "watches". Am I correct? In case I'm not, could you give me more examples of this kind of situation?

Best regards,

Jose Emilio.

[Jamie (K)]

This depends on where you live, José.

In North America we're more liable to deal with words like "couple", "company", "team", etc., as singular nouns, so we would use the third person singular verb form in the present tense (lives, watches, etc.).

In the UK, they're more likely to treat these nouns as a collection of people, and then they would use a plural verb form (live, watch, etc.).

However, there is variation, so sometimes Americans use a plural verb form with those nouns, and I suppose that sometimes the British use singular verb forms.

[Alan]

Hi Jose Emilio,

When I wrote 'couple' in that sentence, I was thinking of 'the two people' and this logically made me write 'live' as a consequence. Interestingly the use of 'who' to my mind suggests 'people' in contrast to 'couple' possibly requiring 'which' and the singular.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Prepositions

[Jemaiorino]

Dear Alan, Jamie

Thank you very much for your explanations.

We have something similar in Portuguese, but in our case it would be definitely wrong. You cannot say the equivalent of "the couple live" in Portuguese. And as far as I know, there are no exceptions.

Thank you again and have a nice day.

José Emílio.