You can’t say “everyone have lived” in British English, either. But number agreement in English is generally not to be taken entirely seriously, so “everyone has … their life/lives” is fine in both variants. The reason is that “everyone” works semantically like “all people”, not like “every person”, but just happens to nonetheless trigger singular agreement on the verb. That’s also why you can say “everyone liked each other”, like “all people liked each other”, but not “every person liked each other”.
Thanks for elaborating. Is British English generally freer with plural verbs on collective nouns, would you say? I was taught that it is, but by American grammarians.
You can’t say “everyone have lived” in British English, either. But number agreement in English is generally not to be taken entirely seriously, so “everyone has … their life/lives” is fine in both variants. The reason is that “everyone” works semantically like “all people”, not like “every person”, but just happens to nonetheless trigger singular agreement on the verb. That’s also why you can say “everyone liked each other”, like “all people liked each other”, but not “every person liked each other”.
Thanks for elaborating. Is British English generally freer with plural verbs on collective nouns, would you say? I was taught that it is, but by American grammarians.
Some fictional evidence upon the matter. :)
That’s quite true. It’s just that the pronoun “everyone” is a different kind of animal from collective nouns.