Data show(s)?: "Data" pede verbo no "singular" ou "plural"?

Andrerson,

Pergunta muito boa. As duas formas são possíveis. Veja o que diz o Cambridge Online:

The data was/were collected by various researchers.
Now the data is/are being transferred from magnetic tape to hard disk.


Conclusão:

Tanto a forma no singular quanto a no plural são aceitas.

Donay, essa regra só serve para "data"?

Andrerson,

Não é bem uma regra. Sim, acontece com outros. No momento não me recordo de um exemplo semelhante.

Em inglês, existe a possibilidade de um mesmo termo admitir um verbo tanto no singular quanto no plural.

"Both datums (see usage in datum article) and the originally Latin plural data are used as the plural of datum in English, but data is commonly treated as a mass noun and used with a verb in the singular form, especially in day-to-day usage. For example, This is all the data from the experiment. This usage is inconsistent with the rules of Latin grammar and traditional English (These are all the data from the experiment). Even when a very small quantity of data is referenced (One number, for example) the phrase piece of data is often used, as opposed to datum. The debate over appropriate usage is ongoing." From Wiki

For a discussion of other Anglicized forms, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_pl ... _and_Greek