Dumsy_1711 wrote:
Can anyone dumb this down for me please?
A compound subject connected by and is 100% pluralCompound subject = Human expansion and Human appropriation. It is plural, so the use of 'are' is correct.
What appears after the verb, whether 'is' or 'are', happens to be the object of the verb as you see in this case.I didn't understand this part.
Subject = Human expansion and Human appropriation
Verb = are. Or is there a verb before 'are'?
Objects do not decide the nature of the verb of the same clause.Lost, again.
KarishmaB,
GMATNinja,
carcass ,
AjiteshArun ,
MartyTargetTestPrep- please help.
Hi Dumsy_1711,
1. "A compound subject connected by and is 100% plural"
A compound subject is a subject that has more than one noun (usually two). One way to join two nouns (like {X} and {Y} in the example below) is to use
and.
[{X} and {Y}]
are {ABC} ("[{Anuj} and {Ranjana}]
have some questions.")
Such subjects almost always (but not "100%") take a plural verb. Two exceptions: (a) when the subject is considered to be one "unit" and (b) when the nouns are preceded by
every or
each.
(a) {X and Y} is {ABC} ("{Strawberries and cream}
is/are served here.") ← When {X and Y} is considered one thing (rather than two separate things joined together), we go singular. Some people wouldn't consider this a compound subject, so it's possible that daagh wasn't referring to this kind of subject.
(b) [Every {student and teacher}] | [{Every student} and {every teacher}]
is/are in the building. ← Singular nouns preceded by
each or
every take a singular verb.
2. "What appears after the verb, whether 'is' or 'are', happens to be the object of the verb as you see in this case."
Here, daagh was using "whether 'is' or 'are'" to refer to "the verb", not to "what appears after the verb". That is, he was trying to say "what appears after 'is' or 'are'".
3. "Objects do not decide the nature of the verb of the same clause."
Try not to focus on daagh's use of the term
object. In this case, he was most likely just trying to say that a noun on the right of the verb doesn't influence the verb. This is correct in most cases.
[{Human expansion} and {human appropriation of Earth's finite resources}]
are the cause. ← Ignore
the cause when looking at subject-verb agreement.
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