Since John Locke acknowledged authorship of his political works only in a codicil to his will, the period during which the Second Treatise on Government was written has been established through a close analysis of Locke's reported activities near the time of publication; however, because no original manuscript has been found, what is much more difficult to determine are the personal reason Locke wrote the Treatise, the changes he might have made to his first version, and the extent to which the published version coheres with Locke's intentions.


A. has been established through a close analysis of Locke's reported activities near the time of publication; however, because no original manuscript has been found, what is much more difficult to determine are

B. has been established through a close analysis of Locke's reported activities near the time of publication; however, because no original manuscript has been found, what is much more difficult to determine is

C. have been established through a close analysis of Locke's reported activities near the time of publication; however, because no original manuscript has been found, what is much more difficult to determine is

D. have been established through a close analysis of Locke's reported activities near the time of publication; however, because no original manuscript has been found, what is much more difficult to determine are

E. are established through a close analysis of Locke's reported activities near the time of publication; however, because no original manuscript has been found, that which is much more difficult to determine is

Is the answer A -

the period is singular and hence the has been.

and then in - what is much more difficult to determine are the personal reason Locke wrote the Treatise, the changes he might have made to his first version, and the extent to which the published version coheres with Locke's intentions

i feel that there are three phrases componded by and - the personal reason Locke wrote the Treatise, the changes he might have made to his first version, the extent to which the published version coheres with Locke's intentions. hence this requires a plural verb and.

crackgmat750, can u tell what the OA is.

(B) for sure,

for "The period" you need singular "has" so (C),(D),(E) out.

You need singular "is the personal" so (A), (D) out.

Yes guys OA is B.
My concern was same as anuramm.. since after the determine there are 3 things given. But it seems that we have to decide accordingly to "what is" which is similar. Can anybody else throw some more light on such kind of subject verb arrangements.

crackgmat750,
Me trying to throw some light here

what is........( here "is" is being used becuase the "personal reason" is singular)

Had the sentence contained "personal reasons" the use of "are" would come in to picture.

I hope you get my point. It is "personal reason" that is governing the verb after "what".
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ash
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I'm crossing the bridge.........

am I the only one getting confused with thios post?
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./abisurd
Not absurd

ashkq,
thanks for the explanation. i posted this question in an english forum . the question and the answer -
I am not able to understand the subject-verb agreement concept in the below sentence.

what is much more difficult to determine is the personal reason Locke wrote the Treatise, the changes he might have made to his first version, and the extent to which the published version coheres with Locke's intentions

Now there are two 'is' in the original sentence. In 'what is much more difficult to determine' , what does 'is' correspond to (as in what subject). And the 'is' after determine corresponds to what subject.

My thought - Since there are three reasons that are given as difficult to determine , i felt that the sentence should read as -

what is much more difficult to determine are the personal reason Locke wrote the Treatise, the changes he might have made to his first version, and the extent to which the published version coheres with Locke's intentions.

Where am i making a mistake.

I really thank you for helping me on this.

Hello, Guest.

Yours is a particular type of sentence called "pseudo-cleft sentence". I've been thinking how to explain the use of the second "is" for a while now, and I've come to the conclusion that I will both post a paragraph from a book and add my own comment to it.

The following sentences are from "A Grammar of Contemporary English", by R. Quirk at al:

"What we need is more books."
"Good manners are a rarity these days."

And this is what you read in the book about subject-verb agreement in these sentences:
"For both sentences there are variants in which the number of the verb is in agreement with the complement:
'What we need more are books.'
'Good manners is a rarity these days.'
These are probably ascribable to the workings of 'notional concord', the idea of plurality being dominant in the first and that of singularity in the second."

My comment: one of the reasons for having more than one possibility when choosing the form of the verb is that an "intensive" verb is used: to be. In many cases, the subject and the subject complement can "exchange" positions in the sentence and, when subject and subject complement are different in number, we usually have the verb agree with the subject (in this case the "formal" subject") rather than with the complement.
Also, "what" is ambivalent with respect to number.

In your original sentence, "is" has been used for one of two reasons:
- the parts of the subject complement may have been taken as a unit, so to speak: "What is difficult to determine is ALL THIS", or "THIS, as a group, is what is difficult to determine".
- The verb agrees with the "formal" subject (what...) . This is not uncommon in "pseudo-cleft sentences" (sentences like the one you posted: a single main clause is divided into two units, each with its own verb. They start usually with "what", and they are used for the sake of "focus").

I'd use "are" is the form of the sentence were:
"The personal reason Locke wrote the Treatise, the changes he might have made to his first version, and the extent to which the published version coheres with Locke's intentions are much more difficult to determine."


Please let me know if this is not clear enough? I tried to keep it short and fairly simple.

Miriam

From the above discussion what i can infer is -

The subject of this sentence is -
what is much more difficult to determine and hence demands a singular verb. This must be the case even if 'the personal reason' is replaced with ' ' personal reasons'.

But supposing we consider this sentence -
Much more difficult to determine are the personal reason Locke wrote the Treatise, the changes he might have made to his first version, and the extent to which the published version coheres with Locke's intentions.

In this the subject is 3 different things and hence requires a plural verb.

hope i am making some sense.

thanks.