Hi Members,

I wanted to share with you my compiled findings for a very specific issue and ask for help in completing my findings. The below sentence still bothers me toward the end of my SC journey, as I still don't fully comprehend the rule behind it. I have poked around and built my own little formula from bits and pieces around the forums, but I am still not at rest.

Example from GMAT prep:
Fossils of a whale that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have been recovered by paleontologists.

Let me color code it:
Fossils of a whale that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have been recovered by paleontologists.

Extracting:
FOSSILS... have been...
Whale that beached... and was butchered ...

Which leads me to the rule:
ONE OF "PLURAL" + that\who = "PLURAL"
- or -
ONE OF "SINGULAR" + that/who = "SINGULAR"

This should be correct from all I have gathered, feel free to correct me.

A far more confusing example using "one of" - found also on this forum (I have shortened it as I can not find the full version, I believe it is from MGMAT):

Example 2 with "one of":
One of the factors that keep the team alive ...

... Factors that KEEP .. this seems to be the correct agreement (although I saw heavy discussion on this topic).

To complete / add to this sentence, would my own addition be correct?
One of the factors that keep the team alive IS ....

- or - at this point, is "factors" the subject and we should be looking at plural?

One of the factors that keep the team alive ARE ...

While I have my own thoughts, I was wondering if anyone had a concrete answer?

Thanks,
-C
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That 700.. I can taste it

I have, I thought my lengthy battle with the topic at hand might show from the post.

My question above is not about the particular example that I have given from GMAT prep. My question is about the rule set, and how to apply it to a broad spectrum of questions. Notice my second example.

There is not much detail on this rule, not even in MGMAT's SC Book from what I have seen. It is interesting how the two examples work, and I am not quite sure how the second one plays out.

Regards,
-C
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That 700.. I can taste it

Perfect, I really needed some confirmation on the modification part.

You have summed it up quite nicely here:



This is generally the structure of GMAT questions as well, so I will continue along this path.

Thank you,

-C
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That 700.. I can taste it