--- In cybalist@... s.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2008-12-19 09:13, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> > Unlike 'sand', 'milk', etc., it takes a plural verb: 'the
> > cattle are in the barn'.
>
> It's a collective plural sensu stricto, the clearest example of one in
> English. <snip> ... <police> functions like a count plural rather
> than a collective (it can be used with numerals, while <cattle> can't).
The prohibition against using numerals with <cattle> is news to me. I
got 12,900 raw Google hits for '20 cattle', and this was number + noun
in most cases. I got 10,400 raw Google hits for 'five cattle', and a
bare majority were for number + noun, albeit sometimes part of a
compound number (e.g. <thirty-five [sic] cattle>), rather than
collocations such as <five cattle rustlers> or <one in five cattle>.
The phrase 'five head of cattle' got 5,600 hits, so the two
constructions are about equally common in writing.
Richard.
Well, we live in free societies with freedom of speech, so people can speak any way they want, including saying "irregardless" or "I could care less". I think Piotr is referring to correct English usage, and in this respect I agree with what he has said.
Andrew