Grammar question
 

Heya, I'd like your opinion on this:

I'm reviewing a brief right now, and there are several sentences with this construction:

"The only evidence were the affidavits."

Now, to me, that's incorrect agreement between the subject and verb. If "evidence" is the subject, then it should read, "The only evidence was the affidavits."

But that sounds wrong. Maybe "evidence" is a collective noun? Maybe the verb "to be" is reflexive and is messing me up.

If you reverse it, to say "The affidavits were the only evidence" that sounds better, and I could reword it. But I was always taught that the sentence construction should be the same either way (subject first, or object first, you still have to have agreement.)

Looks ok to me as is. Evidence is plural here so you need to use were not was.

you think "evidence' is plural?

Yes.... I think so. You can't say evidences. If there was only one affidavit it would be singular.

Imma say was. Gut reaction/reasons stated. But maybe it's different in American grammar and/or legalese.

The only deer I shot was Bambi.
The only deer I shot were Bambi and his mom.

No, evidence does not get pluralized in that way -Looked it up in my big old oxford. Evidence means one or more pieces of whatever. (paraphrasing here)

I believe 'evidence' is both the singular and the plural:
as in 'some evidence' and 'a piece of evidence'

but you would say some evidence was provided, not some evidence were provided.

I guess it is sort of acting like a collective noun...

"Evidence" is plural. It belongs to a special class of words called plurale tantum, nouns that have only a plural form.

Therefore, the construction in your example is correct.

But I know from my copy editor friend that Brits and Americans use those diffently -one of us says "the team was" and the other says "the team were" and I'm way too embedded here to know which is which, or even if it's relevant here, so I think i'd better duck out now

But you wouldn't say "The affidavits was the only evidence" because the verb and the subject don't match up - which is closer to what's being said here.

well, I'm glad I'm not the only one confused.

It's like the words "assortment" and "collection" and "bunch" and "group" etc which are singular even though they refer to many things.

Is there evidence that "Evidence" is a plurale tantum? it's not given as on in the Oxford, whereas the other examples mentioned in the Wiki article are.