Dear all,
Which of the following sentence is correct?
1.They have lost their minds.
2.They have lost their mind.
3.We are riding a bike.
4.We are riding bikes.
5.We must treasure our life.
6.We must treasure our lives.

Thank you.

In each case, the correct sentence is the one with the plural nouns as objects. (1, 4, and 6).

In addition to the sentences 1, 4,and 6, sentence 5 can be considered correct if the speaker is thinking of "life" as an experience shared by all of us.

Rachel

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Thank you, Rachel, as always.
So, if my frind and I are riding separate bicycles, I should say, "We are riding bicycles" and never should I say "We are riding a bicycle." And if I say "We are riding a bicycle," we must be riding on the same bicycle. Am I right?

How about the following:
1.Everyone has his or her own choice. What you should do is to tell them the good sides and the bad sides of their choices.
2. In our faces, we have eyes, noses, and mouthes.

Are these two sentences correct? In the first example,since we say "their" we must say "their choices" and since there are many choices altogether, there are good "sides" and bad "sides."
And because we use "we," we have to use the plural form for "eyes" "noses" "mouthes" despite the fact that everyone has two eyes, but only one nose and mouth.
Am I right?

Yes, you are right about the bicycles, as Jerry has noted.

You could, though, also put the second independent clause exactly as you have it: "never should I say..." Placing a negative adverb at the beginning of the independent clause – with the inversion of the subject and the auxiliary verb (never should I say) – is an alternative to the regularly used "I should never say.")
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About the sentence beginning with "everyone" – "everyone" causes great problems to us English speakers since "everyone" is singular, grammatically, yet carries a plural meaning.

In your sentence, "Everyone has (or makes) his or her own choice," "his or her" is a formal use of referent possessive adjectives.. That would be OK, but the next sentence has an informal use of the possessive their as well as the object pronoun, them.

However, to follow up on the formal his or her construction would result in a most unfortunate sentence:

"¢ Everyone makes his or her own choice. What you should do is tell him or her the good sides and the bad sides of his or her choice.

Because of the awkwardness of being consistent with referents, it is often suggested to writers that they change the wording of the sentence slightly. Here are some alternatives:

"¢ Everyone makes their own choices. What you should do is tell them the good sides and the bad sides of their choices.

"¢ We all make our own choices. What you should do is to tell everyone the good sides and the bad sides of their choices.

"¢ All of us make our own choices. What you should do is tell everyone the good sides and the bad sides of their choices.

The Grammar Exchange has addressed the tricky topic of agreement with "everyone" previously; I have copied the entry from the Archives and attached it to the bottom of this posting. You can click on it to see it.
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About the plural of eyes, noses, and mouths – yes, your way with plurals is one way to describe our faces, with "we."

If "everyone" is the subject, then you would say, "Everyone has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth."

Rachel

EVERYONE_and_EVERYBODY.doc (27 KB, 16 downloads)

Thank you.
In English, agreement is very important, but don't you, as a native speaker of English, think it is a bit awkward sometimes to sacrifice clarity for the sake of agreement? I mean, don't you think it is "more natural" to say the the first sentence instead of the second?
1.People all have eyes, ears, a nose, and a mouth.
2.People all have eyes, ears, noses, and mouthes.

If we use the first sentence, we can point out the different numbers of the features, but if we use the sencond one, we are only following "the agreement."

Also,I read a sentence in an article the other day:
Someone once estimated that we answer to our name 328,728 times during our lives.

Should we say "our names" instead of "our name" here?

Yes, it is nice to be consistent!

As you so well realize, though, consistency isn't everything. There is a subtle difference between the first and second sentences. The first – People all have eyes, ears, a nose, and a mouth – focuses on an individual person, while the second – People all have eyes, ears, noses, and mouths – just focuses on all the features mixed up together.

Yes, it is perfectly all right, and indeed sometimes desirable, to trump consistency with logic and clarity.
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About this sentence – Someone once estimated that we answer to our name 328,728 times during our lives – the singular "name" is preferable, since a person has one name to be called by (even if it sometimes consists of several names like Charles Thomas Henry Smith III).
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While it is comfortable to be consistent, Quirk et al* recognize that sometimes there is a number choice. They state this:

While the ....plural is the norm [in agreeing with a plural subject], the....singular may also be used to focus on individual instances. We therefore often have a number choice:

"¢ The children raised their hand / hands.

"¢ Some children have an understanding father / understanding fathers.

"¢ We all have a good appetite / good appetites....

The singular is sometimes obligatory or preferable with idioms and metaphors:

"¢ We are keeping an open mind [NOT keeping open minds]
"¢ They vented their spleen [NOT spleens] on him.
"¢ They can't put their finger [NOT fingers] on what's wrong.

The singular is sometimes used to avoid ambiguity:

"¢ Students were asked to name their favorite sport. [NOT sports if there is just one to be named by each student]

"¢ Children must be accompanied by a parent [NOT by parents if only one parent is required].

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You are correct in your instincts, Joyce. It's nice to be consistent, but it's more important to be clear and express the focus that you want.

Incidentally, have you heard the expression, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"?

Rachel
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*A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. Longman. 1985

My posting is based on material from section 10.47 in this reference. The comments in the brackets are mine.

.

Joyce raised a very good question in the post. The sentences discussed so far involve what Quirk et al (1985:768) call distributive plural:

The distributive plural is used in a plural noun phrase to refer to a set of entities matched individually with individual entities in another set. While the distributive plural is the norm, the distributive singular may also be used to focus on individual instances. We therefore often have a number choice (between raise their hand and raise their hands ). The singular is sometimes obligatory or preferable with idioms and metaphors (keep an open mind). The distributive singular is sometimes used to avoid ambiguity (name their favourite sport - everyone is to name only one favorite sport).

References
Quirk et al. 1985. The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London and New York: Longman. p. 768.

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