Agreement

Consider the sentence ' They is at home'. It is incorrect. There are different components in a sentence that need to agree with each other.

What Does Agreement Mean in Grammar?

'Agreement' (also called concord) means that the person, number, gender, case, etc. of the related verbs, subjects, predicates, and antecedents must be the same.

Agreement: Types

There are different types of agreements in English grammar:

Subject-Verb Agreement

The subject has to agree with the verb. This is particularly important when it comes to the present simple tense. For example, the third-person singular verb has to be used with the third-person singular subject. Check out the examples:

She plays soccer really well.

They start working tomorrow.

Demonstrative-Noun Agreement

Demonstratives must agree with the nouns they are modifying, especially in number. In other words, plural demonstratives are used with plural nouns, and singular demonstratives are used with singular nouns.

This is a Christmas tree.

These flowers are supposed to be set on the tables.

Noun-Pronoun Agreement

If a singular noun is used, the pronoun has to be singular, and if the noun is plural, the pronoun has to be plural as well. Remember, the noun and pronoun should agree in terms of person and gender. For example:

My friends went to a party last night; they think it was a waste of time.

Hanna was sitting alone. She seemed sad.

an example of a subject-verb agreement

Subject-Verb Agreement with Or and Nor

When two or more subjects are linked to each other using 'or' or 'nor', the verb remains in the singular form. Check out the examples:

Sam or Josh is going to fix the car.

Neither studying abroad nor staying here makes me happy.

Always-Singular Pronouns and Determiners

Words and phrases such as 'each', 'each one', 'either', 'neither', 'every', 'everyone', 'everybody', 'anyone', 'anybody', 'nobody', 'somebody', 'someone', and 'no one' are singular and require a singular verb. Pay attention to the examples:

Everyone hates her.

Each nail was done in a particular shape.

Collective Noun-Verb Agreement

With 'collective nouns' as a single unit, we use singular verbs unless we are referring to the members of the collective noun. Here are some examples:

The team is getting ready for the match.

The staff write their work reports everyday.

Review

The agreement is the correspondence of different parts of a sentence. There are agreements between:

nouns and pronouns
subjects and verbs
demonstratives and nouns