Nancy,
 
Indeed "troops" has always been treated as a collective noun and still is (Today's NY Times: "U.S. Troops Set for Final Attack on Falluja Force," and my 10-year-old dictionaries show it only in that sense. What you missed is that newspapers and TV news reports now also use the term in a non-collective sense, as in "Over 1000 American troops have been killed" and "23 Troops Ambushed in Kirkuk." 

I suspect this was originally a convenience for headline writers. "Troops" is shorter than "soldiers" and covers all military personnel. The curious fact is that I have seen it used in print for as few as two persons but, to my knowledge, never for one. Bill McCleary's quotation from a soldier ("You're a good troop") is an indication that this may now be changing as well.

Dick Veit

________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Nancy Downard
Sent: Fri 11/12/2004 5:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: plural noun with no singular


In my VERY humble opinion, the  word 'troop' is in its singular form, HOWEVER, because it's a collective noun, it automatically refers to a group of something.  You can have a single troop (one group of soldiers) or many troops (several groups of soldiers).

There are many collective nouns out there that follow this same pattern, a herd of elephants (one group) or herds of elephants (more than one).  Other examples, gaggle/s, pride/s, pod/s, etc.  

Am I missing something in the original post???? 

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