Collective nouns and agreement


I REFER to the following sentence from Paul Chan for MOE on Jan 6: “We have a series of six articles that give a good description of the heritage building.” I noted your explanation that a plural verb should be used as the plural noun is seen to be a more important antecedent than the main noun (“series”) of the noun phrase.

However, could you please explain why a singular verb is used after the relative pronoun “that” in the following statement/sentence on page 1273 of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (7th edition) for the word “regiment”: “A large group of soldiers that IS commanded by a colonel.”

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