grammatical number - Singular/plural forms of subjects with “respectively”


Consider the following sentences:



  1. The schema of the A and B buffer are called C and D, respectively.

  2. The schemas of the A and B buffer are called C and D, respectively.

  3. The schemas of the A and B buffers are called C and D, respectively.


The question is whether schema and buffer should be singular or plural. My guess is that all three are correct. One can think of the first and second sentences as reductions of the following one:



The schema of the A buffer and the schema B buffer are called C and D, respectively.



From this perspective, the first and second sentences simply contains ellipses, enabling one to avoid unnecessary repetitions of words.


I would be grateful if somebody could confirm the above reasoning. Thank you!


Regards, Ivan



Answer



The first sentence is for certain ungrammatical. If we remove the prepositional phrase we are left with



The schema are called C and D, respectively.



This should be



The schemas are called C and D, respectively.



This leaves the question of whether it is "buffer" or "buffers". Let's examine just the sentence's subject:



  1. The schemas of the A and B buffer

  2. The schemas of the A and B buffers


I would parse the first as saying that there is an "A and B buffer" which has several schemas, whereas I would parse the second as saying that there is an "A buffer" and a "B buffer", and between them they have several schemas. Interestingly this ambiguity goes away in the case of



The schemas of the A buffer and the B buffer



While this ambiguity is resolved by the use of "respectively", it makes the sentence somewhat awkward to read, if not ungrammatical. To avoid this ambiguity I would recommend either



The schemas of the A and B buffers are called C and D, respectively.



or



The schemas of the A buffer and the B buffer are called C and D, respectively.



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