在英语中, “family（家庭）”、“team（团队）”、“staff（全体成员）” 都属于 “collective nouns（集合名词）”。表示一组人或事物的词语即可被称为 “collective nouns（集合名词）”。集合名词看似抽象难懂，其实不然。
用法总结
A secret about collective nouns
Collective nouns are also called group nouns. Their function is to refer to a number of things or people as one unit. Some of these group nouns can be singular or plural – both are correct and the choice is up to the speaker.
集合名词在英语中既可以被称为 “collective nouns”，也可以被称为 “group nouns”。它用来指代一组事物或一群人。集合名词可以是单数，也可以是复数，两者都正确，用哪个由说话者来选择。
- Government 政府
- Family 家庭、家人
- Team 团队
1. Be careful
Not all collective nouns act in this way. Some are always plural.
注意，并非所有集合名词都遵循这一规律。有一些集合名词做主语只能是复数，谓语动词需保持一致。
- The police are coming.
- The staff are tired.
2. A group of individuals
These nouns can be considered a group of individuals - a football team has 11 individual players. In this case, the pronoun is they and the verb form is plural.
以下这些名词可以被视为是一个由个体组成的集合。比如：一支足球队有11名球员。在这种情况下，代词用 “they”，谓语动词是复数。
- My football team are the best. They are unbeatable.
- The government plan to raise taxes. They are always doing that.
- My family are happy. They never have any problems.
3. A unit
These nouns can also be considered a unit - even though they have individual parts, they function together in unison. In this case, the pronoun is it and the verb form is singular.
以下这些名词也可以被视为是一个单位，尽管它是由不同的个体部分组成，但功能相同，目标一致。在这种情况下，代词用 “it”，谓语动词是单数。
- My football team is the best. It is unbeatable.
- The government plans to raise taxes. It is always doing that.
- My family is happy. It never has any problems.
