"rest of the audience" - singular or plural?

[Ponders]

This is the phrase I have to use

the rest of the audience learns and sings the choruses of four songs

I feel it should be "the rest of the audience learn and sing"

???

[orangeandlemons]

Learn and sing.....I think

[SageBush]

Singular, I reckon, as 'the rest' is a singular noun (eg. '...and the rest is history').

[AgentProvocateur]

The rest of the audience sings. Rest is singular.

[Jacksterbear]

I think it should be singular - audience = singular, collective noun I think.

[MirandaWest]

I think it's singular as well - one audience although made up of lots of people.

[Jacksterbear]

It's about "audience" being singular, not" rest", i think. "The rest of the children" would be followed by a plural because children is plural.

[Ponders]

thanks, all

(we do love a good grammar thread, don't we? )

I know rest & audience are both singular, it just didn't sound quite right...

what would the pronoun be for "rest of the audience"? Would it be "it"?

[WMittens]

Aye, audience is singular, so the bold phrase is correct.

[cumfy]

I would vote for:

The rest/others learn and sing....

since in the prior text you will have referred to the audience and thus the context will be apparent (conveniently circumventing the need to ponder the grammar of collective nouns)

[Jacksterbear]

But,, cumfy, "rest" should still take the singular since it refers back to the audience; "others" should take the plural: so the "/" which indicates they are interchangeable and should take the same verb form wouldn't work, IMO.

[Jacksterbear]

Unless, arguably, you could imply "the rest" to refer to "the rest of the people in the audience" or "the rest of them" which would be plural.

[WMittens]

LunaticFringe

Which bit doesn't work? You said yourself that 'audience' is singular, and also to substitute other words so let's give that a go:

"She learns and sings..."
"They learn and sing..."

"She learn and sing..."
"They learns and sings..."

[mercibucket]

the rest of it or the rest of them

[mercibucket]

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv128.shtml

[WMittens]

The rest is one thing. That's the quantifier.

I would argue "the rest..." is almost always going to be plural; "the other..." would be singular.

"Three men walk into a bar; two fall down a hole in the floor, the rest walks around it."

Sorry, I can't see it.

[WMittens]

Actually hang that, I can see it now, however, can you state which sentence should be used?

[ThreeBeeOneGee]

The rest of the audience is...
The rest of the audience are...

The former seems correct. Go for singular.

[mercibucket]

sorry i couln't convert the oink
audience can be both singular and plural
i think plurality is more likely as 'the rest of them dance' sounds better ie the rest of the people in the audience

[mercibucket]

oink???

[Olivess]

Ooh I did my dissertation on this at university (part of my degree was about English grammar).

The 'rest of the audience is a collective noun' (in fact 'the rest of' is not really relevant). Whether you use the singular or plural depends on where you are.

In US English - the singular tends to be used with collective nouns. For example in this newspaper article about Chelsea football team they use the singular verb 'Chelsea wins'.
www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/sports/soccer/chelsea-wins-in-europa-league.html?ref=sports

However in British English we tend to use the plural verb for collective nouns. In this article on the bbc website about Chelsea they say: 'A lacklustre Chelsea, top scorers in the group stages of the Champions League, were sloppy in possession...'.
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/21448051

This is all to do with how we view collective nouns. In the USA clearly the team is considered as one. Whereas in UK we seem to view a team as a group of individuals. The plural being more important.

So strictly for 'the rest of the audience' we should be using the plural verb form - 'the rest of the audience learn and sing.' So OP your original gut feeling was right. Unless you are in the US.

Sorry my geekiness finishes there, hope that helps. That took me back 11 years .

[Ponders]

wow! Thanks for that, Olivess - I am very impressed! (Does your conclusion have cultural resonances too? Americans better team players than arsey Brits?)

loving the oink, merci. autocorrect gets better & better.

I will go with plural. I was thinking that if you subsequently used a pronoun to refer to the rest of the audience, in the same sentence, it would be "they" & not "it" - NOT "while the rest of the audience waited for the performance, it ate ice cream"