There exists extensive prior theoretical literature and some experimental data on demonstrative-noun and subject-verb agreement, yet basic research questions have not been tested. This experiment used collective nouns that can be perceived as both singular and plural in order to test whether the singular or plural form is preferred when referring to the collective noun with either a demonstrative (‘this’ or these’) or a verb (‘was’ or ‘were’). I also aimed to test whether increasing the linear distance through the addition of filler words between the controller (demonstrative or verb) and the target (the collective noun) affected average participant ratings of sentences. I used a grammaticality judgement test administered online, and found that demonstrative-noun agreement prefers the syntactic singular form, whereas verbs showed no significant preference for number, which reflect their inclination instead for morphosyntactic markings. The addition of the filler in the length variable significantly increased average rating in demonstratives, possibly underpinned by a limitation of semantic memory prioritised for conceptual information, and little need to retain the information for comprehension. The addition of linear distance in subject-verb agreement also caused a significant but much smaller decrease in average ratings.