The Borg *is* everywhere...?

Parallels, Season 7.
Why is Hobo Riker referring to the Borg in the singular rather than plural?
I always burst into laughter at this line, as well as Frakes' messed up beard and hair and the way he delivers it all.

 

Maddened by grief, Riker has decided to homage the lost Captain Picard by using the British style of treating collective nouns as single entities rather than the American practice of conjugating them as plurals. Sadly, his mind is too far gone to recall that Picard was actually French.

 

Q did it once too

Q: The Borg is the ultimate user. They're unlike any threat your Federation has ever faced. They're not interested in political conquest, wealth or power as you know it. They're simply interested in your ship, its technology. They've identified it as something they can consume.

Using is instead of are when treating something as a collective noun. http://www.dictionary.com/e/collective-nouns/

 

It just sounds so clunky though. You don't say "There is deer on the road", you say "There are deer on the road".

 

But do you say "There's deer on the road" or "There're deer on the road"?

 

Blame the The part of their name. Without it Q would have said "Borg are the ultimate user..." I guarantee.

 

As long as we are discussing proper use of plural and singular, since the word "data" is plural of Latin "datum," then every time Data's name is used, it should also be treated as a plural.

Encounter at Farpoint: "Commander Data are on special assignment, sir."
When the Bough Breaks: "Captain, Data have found something interesting."
The High Ground: "Doctor, Commander Data have informed me of your situation."
The Schizoid Man: "Data are an orphan in a manner of speaking."
Rascals: "Mister Data are coordinating the salvage efforts now."

Kor

 

Maybe they should have been calling him Commander Datum?

 

The Borg have a collective consciousness, and (at least in theory) an undivided will and purpose. So in a certain sense, it can be referred to as a single entity (a super-organism), dispersed over many points in space.

I'm not saying I necessarily believe this myself, but it might be a way of looking at it. At any rate, I never found this singular reference that weird, the state the Borg collective is in is probably beyond our deteministic classifications such as 'singular' and 'plural'.

 

I don't think Riker had time to think about grammar at that point.

The word data may be based on a plural but now it refers more to a pooled resource like 'Water'.

 

"ADMIRAL! THERE BE DEERS HERE!"

 

This just confuses the issue when Data is seen in multiple displaced places in Schizoid Man - If the word Data is plural, what's the plural of the proper noun Data? "Datas"? "Look at all those Datas"? That's like saying "Hobbitses."

 

Clearly the plural is Misters Data.

 

The Borg is everywhere
The Borg is everything
The Borg is everybody
The Borg is still the king

 

Because, originally, the Borg was a single entity. Made up of parts that formed the whole.

This all reminds me of the US vs UK between giving group entities singular vs plural status. English as a language is a little more convoluted to begin with, sure, but a company is still a group of people so the UK gets it wrong when its citizens conflate the two and treats a singular entity as if it were plural, so .

 

Makes me think of this old TV Guide cover from when "Scorpion" aired: https://www.amazon.com/Guide-10-16-1997-Borg-Back/dp/B000YO72QM

THE BORG IS BACK!

 

It's the other way around. In British usage, collective entities (firms, agencies, organizations and the like) are construed as plural. The Brits say "Ford have announced a new model" or "the Labour Party were defeated."

Americans generally use singular verbs with collective entities, even when the subject is plural in form. We say "United Artists presents . . ." and "General Motors is laying off workers."

And nouns don't conjugate; verbs conjugate. Nouns decline.

 

naa that rule don't count if it's a name.

PULASKI: Da(h)ta, look at this.
DATA: Data.
PULASKI: What?
DATA: My name. It is pronounced Data.
PULASKI: Oh?
DATA: You called me Da(h)ta.
PULASKI: What's the difference?
DATA: One is my name. The other is not.

Just like that rule doesn't apply either