SV agreement of the form " A/The Majority of thing/things Verb"

Question

Hi,

Can you please explain the SV agreement of the form " A/The Majority of thing/things Verb".
I have come across many cases in with either of them was considered singular or plural and that has lead to a lot of confusion.
Is there any rule regarding this?

Please share your insight on this.

ReedArnoldMPREP · Answer

These are tricky exceptions to a rule.

Things like "The team of managers" are singular on the GMAT, because 'team' is a 'grouping' word, and the subject is the SINGLE group.

Some things LOOK like that structure:

"A number of people"

"The large majority of employees"

"A fraction of the cars"

--but these are actually plural... Very annoying.

Here, the modifier actually 'splits' the singular into plural (whereas for 'team of managers,' it does not). When we say "A number of people are walking" we mean "a lot of people" which is plural. When we say "the team of managers" we mean (...or on the GMAT, we mean) the team is acting as a single entity.

Now how about for something like:

"A large fraction of the crowd is/are leaving early"?

I THINK (other experts, chime in) this would be singular again. Because 'crowd' is singular!

I think I'd say, as a rule of thumb:

For GROUPING words (like team, group, band, etc...) the subject will be singular.

For PORTIONING words (like fraction, majority, minority, number...) use the number of the noun in the modifier describing what you are portioning to determine number.

The team of managers IS

The teams of managers ARE

A number of people ARE

An amount of water IS

A fraction of bees ARE

A fraction of the colony of bees IS

SV agreement of the form " A/The Majority of thing/things Verb"

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