When notional agreement prevails over plain grammatical agreement

IN this column last August 8, I described the subject of the sentence “Falling oil prices have hurt the economies of Gulf countries” as both notionally and grammatically plural. That subject is, of course, the noun phrase “falling oil prices,” and I made that observation to explain why the plural present-perfect verb form “have hurt” should be used to ensure subject-verb agreement in that sentence. This is because the subject of that sentence is the whole noun phrase itself, “falling oil prices,” which is both grammatically plural and notionally plural.

A few days ago, a member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum who goes by the username melvinhate asked me what I meant by “notionally” when I said that the subject of the sentence “Falling oil prices have hurt the economies of Gulf countries” is plural both grammatically and notionally.