E-mail from I.H., a Filipina writer and teacher based in Hong Kong (April 11, 2011):
Hi Joe—This is for you to ponder at your leisure. For some time, being a constant listener to the BBC World Service here in HK, I keep hearing reports about agreements signed between countries, two parties, etc.
Somehow, it bothers me that the preposition “on” isn’t used in such sentences as “The two sides agreed a strategy…” or “The Democrats and Republicans agreed a plan to…”
Why is it that I always think it’s correct and it would sound better if the verb “agreed” in these cases were always followed by “on.” I’m sure you can elucidate on this.
My reply to I.H.:
I’m not surprised by your discomfort over the absence of the preposition “on” in those BBC news reports using the verb “agreed.” This is because everyone who learned English in the American standard—including you and me, of course—will always think that in such sentences, “agreed” is an intransitive verb in the sense of “to come to terms.” As such, “agreed” can’t have a direct object to act on; it needs a preposition as a grammatical intermediary to the direct object (this direct object is what’s known in English grammar as the object of the preposition). In the two sentences you presented, that preposition will be “on,” so those two sentences will be constructed as follows in the American English standard:
“The two sides agreed on a strategy…”
“The Democrats and Republicans agreed on a plan to…”
In British English, however, the verb “agree” is used transitively in the sense of “to settle on by common consent.”* This is why BBC, which as we know is the bastion of British TV broadcasting, doesn’t use “on” after “agreed” in sentences like those you presented. (I would think that most mass media in the United Kingdom don’t use “on” likewise in such instances.) The verb “agreed” being transitive in those sentences, they can have direct objects and act on them. In the first sentence, in particular, the direct object of the verb “agreed” is “strategy,” so the verb can act on it without need for the intermediary preposition “on”: “The two sides agreed a strategy…” In the second sentence, the direct object of the verb “agreed” is the noun phrase “a plan to…”, so the verb can act on this noun phrase without need for the intermediary preposition “on”: “The Democrats and Republicans agreed a plan to…”
It will take some doing, but you just have to get used to this odd-sounding usage while based in Hong Kong or when reading publications that use British English. To paraphrase the old-age adage, when in Britain, do as the British do.
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*This is based on Definition 2 of “agree” by the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary:
agree “transitive verb 2 chiefly British: to settle on by common consent: ARRANGE <I agreed rental terms with him — Eric Bennett>”
