My understanding is that the question levels and scoring of the three verbal topics function independently of each other. This understanding is supported by ESR data, which show people scoring at high percentiles in some verbal topics while scoring at much lower levels in others.
So, you could score at the top percentile in one or two of the verbal topics even if, in another one or two of the topics, you perform at a much lower level.
Thus, strong performance in two of the topics would help you to score relatively high in verbal even if your performance were not very strong in the third topic.