In linguistics, synesis () is a traditional grammatical/rhetorical term referring to Agreement (linguistics), agreement (the change of a word form based on words relating to it) due to meaning.
A ''constructio kata synesin'' ( la, constructio ad sensum) is a grammatical construction in which a word takes the grammatical gender, gender or grammatical number, number not of the word with which it should regularly agree, but of some other word ''implied'' in that word. It is effectively an agreement of words with the Semantics, sense, instead of the Morphosyntax, morphosyntactic form, a type of form-meaning mismatch.
Examples:
:''One hundred dollars is the cost of rent.''
:''If the band are popular, they will play next month.''
Here, the plural pronoun ''they'' and the plural verb form ''are'' co-refer with the singular noun ''band''. One can think of the antecedent of ''they'' as an implied plural noun such as ''musicians''.
Such use in English grammar is often called notional agreement (or notional concord
), because the agreement is with the ''notion'' of what the noun means, rather than the strict grammatical ''form'' of the noun (the normative formal agreement). The term situational agreement is also found, since the same word may take a singular or plural verb depending on the interpretation and intended emphasis of the speaker or writer:
:''The government is united.'' (Implication: it is a single cohesive body, with a single agreed policy).
:''The government are divided.'' (Implication: it is made up of different individuals or factions, with their own different policy views).
Other examples of Collective noun#Metonymic merging of grammatical number, notional agreement for collective nouns involve some uses of the words ''team'' and ''none''.
Although American and British English grammatical differences#Subject-verb agreement, notional agreement is more commonly used in British English than in American English, some amount is natural language, natural in any variety of English. American style guides give advice, for example, on notional agreement for phrases such as ''a number of'', ''a lot of'', and ''a total of''. The ''AMA Manual of Style'' says,
"''The number'' is singular and ''a number of'' is plural"
(thus ''the number of mosquitoes is increasing'' but ''a number of brands of mosquito repellent are available'') and "The same is true for ''the total'' and ''a total of''"
(thus ''the total was growing'' but ''a total of 28 volunteers have submitted applications'' [not *''has submitted'']). This is the same concept that is covered by The Chicago Manual of Style, Chicago style (16th ed) at "5.9 Mass noun followed by a prepositional phrase",
but not all of the relevant nouns (including "number") are mass nouns.
See also
* American and British English grammatical differences#Subject-verb agreement, American and British English grammatical differences: Formal vs. notional agreement
* Collective noun
* ''Elohim'', a Hebrew word whose number varies.
*
* Singular they#Examples of generic they, Singular ''they''
References
{{Reflist
Grammatical gender
Grammatical number
Figures of speech