Among the emotions on display in the negotiating room were

Among the emotions on display in the negotiating room were anger for repeatedly raising the issue over and over again and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal.

(A) were anger for repeatedly raising the issue over and over again and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal "Among the emotions on display..." is followed by only one emotion, "anger", and therefore it must have a singular verb "was" and not plural verb "were". Eliminate.

(B) was anger for repeatedly raising the issue and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal Correct answer.

(C) were anger over repeatedly raising the issue and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles to begin healing Same error as (A). Eliminate.

(D) was anger about the issue, which was raised over and over, and preventing the wounds from earlier battles, still raw, to begin healing Change in meaning. The "anger" was not about "the issue" itself but about "raising it over and over again". Eliminate.

(E) were anger about the issue, which was raised repeatedly, and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles to begin to heal Same error as (A) and (C). Eliminate.

Hope this helps.

In the b parallelism makes sense that’s why

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Here is my understanding on this:
Pls dont be concerned about inversion or anything else. Lets just try to understand the question with example.

Question: Among the emotions on display in the negotiating room were anger for repeatedly raising the issue over and over again and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal.

When do we use among? When we are referring a group, if we need to compare only two things, we use BETWEEN.
Now, when we use among, but only pointing out one thing from the group, it becomes singular.

Eg: 1) Among all the things, this is the thing which is my favorite.
2) Among all the members in the team, John is the one who is the strongest. (Taking only one thing/object from the list)
3) Among all the members in the team, John and Wick are the smartest. (Taking two things/object/person from the list)

Now, lets take the options one by one:
(A) were anger for repeatedly raising the issue over and over again and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal.
- As explained above, there is only one emotion that is talked about, so use of WERE is not correct. Also, repeatedly and over and over again, means the same thing. Eliminate this.

(B) was anger for repeatedly raising the issue and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal
- one thing is used - so use of WAS is correct. Also, note that there is AND and this is connecting two things, which needs to be parallel. This looks fine - repeatedly raising the issue and preventing the raw wounds.
So, lets keep this option.


(C) were anger over repeatedly raising the issue and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles to begin healing
- Eliminate this for using WERE

(D) was anger about the issue, which was raised over and over, and preventing the wounds from earlier battles, still raw, to begin healing
- Use of WAS makes sense, but the parallelism is lost.

(E) were anger about the issue, which was raised repeatedly, and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles to begin to heal
- Eliminate this for using WERE (error as explained above)

So, the only option that we are left with is B, which is the correct ans.

Hope this helps

Greetings,

First of all why is anger considered the subject and not "emotions"?
Secondly, we see that the usage of among along with emotions make it singular as per the concept described here.
However if we consider the following example, along with among the usage of objects has been used but in this case plural verb is referred to:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/among-the-ob ... fl=similar

Explanation of the same will be highly appreciated

Hello Prithwish093

Let me try to explain -

1. First of all why is anger considered the subject and not "emotions"?

Lets take an example here with same structure- Among the emotions mathematicians (plural) on display in the negotiating in the room were (verb) anger Ramanujan (singular), smartest of them all.
Here, as you can see, a plural verb does not makes sense as the sentence is focusing on one person (the subject - Ramanujan) not on the group of mathematicians

2. along with among the usage of objects has been used but in this case plural verb is referred to
--> Among the objects found in the excavated temple were small terra-cotta effigies
Well this is correct too, because the "focus" here is on terra-cotta effigies and since the subject is plural, "were" works fine.

Hope this helps!

Hi Prithwish093, as this post suggests, the current sentence represents (what's called) an inverted sentence, in which the verb comes before the subject.

Option B (inverted sentence) says:

Among the emotions on display in the negotiating room was anger for repeatedly raising the issue and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal.

This is equivalent to the following non-inverted sentence:

Anger for (repeatedly raising the issue and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal) was among the emotions on display in the negotiating room.

So, the basic structure is:

Anger for (X and Y) was among the emotions on display in the negotiating room.

Now, hopefully it is clear that anger (singular) is the subject and hence, the singular verb was.

Among the emotions on display in the negotiating room were anger for repeatedly raising the issue over and over again and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal.

We have a were/was split, indicating that S-V agreement is an issue here.

"Among the emotions on display in the negotiating room" is a prepositional phase -- this can't be the subject.

Since nothing before the verb can be the subject, the subject must come after the subject. Anger is the subject here.

A, C, and E use "were", which is incorrect since there is only one emotion represented.

D doesn't maintain parallelism by using "raised" and "preventing"

B resolves parallelism we saw in D, and uses "was". Correct!

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