Would would a British/Australian word this sentence:
The group of teachers (was/were) on a field trip with (its/their) students.
In America we would probably use was/their, although some of us know that it should be singular both times.
Indeed, but prepositional phrases have a tendency to cause confusion.
I wonder if we modified the sentence the same result would occur?
The group (was/were) on a field trip with (its/their) peers.
I think a lot of people would find this second sentence easier to conjugate because there are fewer nouns near the subject, making it easier to figure out what the subject really is.
Then again, no one couples Apple with a prepositional phrase, and yet it still produces some difficulty (apparently).
That's the thing though, language is an ever evolving thing. Set rules can be made but they won't/don't last for long.
Some rules persist and aren't really that malleable.
For example, definitions of words change constantly. This is almost a necessity with the way life changes. However, the same cannot be said for how we classify nouns. We have to decide if something is singular or plural and stick to it because repeat deviations would make it harder and harder to figure out what was going on. Even if people are sloppy and lazy with conjugation, the end result would only be an inconsistent language, not a gradually evolved new one.
Indeed, even though spelling and definitions have changed continuously, the way we count nouns really hasn't. It's too much of a fundamental piece of syntax to casually change.
