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. Many group nouns (<family, police, committee, audience, crew>
etc.) optionally behave in a similar way, especially in British English,
but their status is slightly different. For example, we say <these
cattle/people>, but never <these committee>. <These/those police> sounds
perfectly acceptable to me (I wonder how the native speakers of English
feel about it), but then <police> functions like a count plural rather
than a collective (it can be used with numerals, while <cattle> can't).
Piotr