Is there a shorter/better term for disagreement in number than singular-plural mismatch?

Question

Consider someone mentioning "a bacteria", where the number of the pronoun article doesn't match that of the noun.

I suppose one could say there's disagreement in number, or the pronoun article doesn't match the noun but I have always described it as a singular/plural mismatch (or sometimes as a singular-plural mismatch) - which generally gets the idea across.

But it seems to be a slightly clumsy phrase -- and I am often helping people fix their writing (in several contexts), many of whom don't have English as a first language.

It would be handy to have a term that is both shorter and clearer than that three word phrase. Failing that either a shorter or a clearer/simpler term might be useful in some situations.

For example, I'd like to have some other choices for ways to say "Your first sentence has a singular-plural mismatch", either by replacing the last three words or by replacing that term and rephrasing the sentence as a whole.

• Is there a more standard term for this?

• Is there a shorter term? (I don't necessarily seek a single word here)

• Is there a term that while not necessarily shorter might be simpler/plainer (e.g. that might be more readily understood by people who may not have a solid command of English)?

Answer 1

The phrase "a bacteria" does not contain a pronoun. The problem is the combination of the indefinite article a (which can only precede a singular noun) with the plural noun bacteria.

The standard term for the matching between elements of a sentence is agreement or concord. The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (p19) defines agreement as follows:

A morphosyntactic phenomenon whereby two (or more) elements in a clause or sentence are harmonized in terms of the shape† they take, e.g. with regard to person, number or gender. Also called concord.

† Shape is defined elsewhere in the dictionary as equivalent in written English to spelling. So, bacterium and bacteria have different shapes.

The lack of agreement in this case a number disagreement between the article and the noun. I'm not aware of a single word or specific term to identify this kind of mistake.

If one of my English learners made such a mistake I would simply say that you cannot put a (or the indefinite article) in front of a plural noun. If I were marking up a piece of writing for student self-correction, I would highlight the phrase as: number agreement error.

Answer 2

I have often heard "number agreement" to describe the goal of matching the article to the noun.

Answer 3

A standard term is 'subject-verb [dis]agreement'.

Another term would be '{phrase} parity [error]'. (Agreement is accomplished by adding a plural phoneme to the verb {predicate} when the subject lacks a plural morpheme)

Answer 4

This forum has used the term "plurality" to discuss this issue. See Plurality of a group also referenced using we/our/us, so perhaps "plurality mismatch" or "plurality disagreement" would be descriptive.

plurality

grammar: the state of being plural

--Merriam Webster