Last visit was: 19 Nov 2025, 23:03 It is currently 19 Nov 2025, 23:03
Home
GMAT
Messages
Tests
Schools
Events
Rewards
Chat
My Profile
Close
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.

Customized
for You

we will pick new questions that match your level based on your Timer History

Track
Your Progress

every week, we’ll send you an estimated GMAT score based on your performance

Practice
Pays

we will pick new questions that match your level based on your Timer History
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
Go to My Error Log Learn more
Close
Request Expert Reply
Confirm Cancel
User avatar
batman08
User avatar
Joined: 08 Aug 2013
Last visit: 01 Aug 2015
Posts: 25
Own Kudos:
3
Given Kudos: 6
Posts: 25
Kudos: 3
Weeks of stalemate between the government and protesters... 19 Feb 2014, 12:40
Kudos
Add Kudos
Bookmarks
Bookmark this Post
Weeks of stalemate between the government and protesters here was/were shattered Tuesday by a burst of deadly violence that provoked a massive crackdown.

Can someone please explain if it should be was or were in the above sentence ?

Archived Topic
Hi there,
This topic has been closed and archived due to inactivity or violation of community quality standards. No more replies are possible here.
Where to now? Join ongoing discussions on thousands of quality questions in our Verbal Questions Forum
Still interested in this question? Check out the "Best Topics" block below for a better discussion on this exact question, as well as several more related questions.
Thank you for understanding, and happy exploring!
User avatar
mikemcgarry
User avatar
Magoosh GMAT Instructor
Joined: 28 Dec 2011
Last visit: 06 Aug 2018
Posts: 4,479
Own Kudos:
30,537
 [1]
Given Kudos: 130
Expert
Expert reply
Posts: 4,479
Kudos: 30,537
 [1]
Weeks of stalemate between the government and protesters... 19 Feb 2014, 15:33
1
Kudos
Add Kudos
Bookmarks
Bookmark this Post
batman08
Weeks of stalemate between the government and protesters here was/were shattered Tuesday by a burst of deadly violence that provoked a massive crackdown.

Can someone please explain if it should be was or were in the above sentence ?
Show more
Dear batman08,
I'm happy to help. :-)

The subject is "weeks." Here's beginning of the sentence again, withe parentheses around the prepositional phrases:
Weeks (of stalemate) (between the government and protesters) here ....
Any noun that is the object of a prepositional phrase can NEVER be the subject of sentence or a clause. Therefore, if you eliminate all the nouns that are objects of prepositional phrases, that often narrows down the choice of subject considerably Here, the only possible choice is "weeks", which is plural, so we need the plural verb, "were" ----

Weeks ... were shattered on Tuesday by ...

Does this make sense?
Mike :-)
User avatar
batman08
User avatar
Joined: 08 Aug 2013
Last visit: 01 Aug 2015
Posts: 25
Own Kudos:
3
Given Kudos: 6
Posts: 25
Kudos: 3
Weeks of stalemate between the government and protesters... 19 Feb 2014, 15:54
Kudos
Add Kudos
Bookmarks
Bookmark this Post
Quote:

Dear batman08,
I'm happy to help. :-)

The subject is "weeks." Here's beginning of the sentence again, withe parentheses around the prepositional phrases:
Weeks (of stalemate) (between the government and protesters) here ....
Any noun that is the object of a prepositional phrase can NEVER be the subject of sentence or a clause. Therefore, if you eliminate all the nouns that are objects of prepositional phrases, that often narrows down the choice of subject considerably Here, the only possible choice is "weeks", which is plural, so we need the plural verb, "were" ----

Weeks ... were shattered on Tuesday by ...

Does this make sense?
Mike :-)
Show more

Yes! Thanks a lot for the wonderful explanation. :-D
User avatar
MrWallSt
User avatar
Joined: 21 Nov 2013
Last visit: 03 Feb 2016
Posts: 11
Own Kudos:
96
Given Kudos: 9
Posts: 11
Kudos: 96
Weeks of stalemate between the government and protesters... 20 Feb 2014, 07:46
Kudos
Add Kudos
Bookmarks
Bookmark this Post
batman08
Weeks of stalemate between the government and protesters here was/were shattered Tuesday by a burst of deadly violence that provoked a massive crackdown.

Can someone please explain if it should be was or were in the above sentence ?
Show more

Also another interesting way to breakdown GMAT sentence correction problems is into what is called Headwords.

For example in your sentence

"Weeks of stalemate between the government and protesters here was/were shattered Tuesday by a burst of deadly violence that provoked a massive crackdown."

Weeks, stalemate, government, protesters, burst, violence, crackdown are all headwords in their respective noun phrase. A noun phrase is just like it sounds, a phrase that contains a noun. Without getting too much into the details, the noun weeks is a single word noun phrase. Then look at the next noun in the sentence, stalemate. What is stalemate doing, modifying weeks. government and protesters are adding further description to stalemate, by describing who the stalemate was between. Then you hit a verb. Since the nouns prior to the verb all served to add description in someway to weeks, that verb should describe weeks. On the other end, you see the noun burst. Then violence is describing what kind of burst. Then you have a description for violence "that provoked a massive crackdown".

In general if you indentify the nouns in a sentence and then simply look to see what those nouns are doing, ie just adding a description to a noun before it or not, breaking down sentences becomes a little more intuitive.

If that was helpful in anyway, any kudos would be appreciated.

Archived Topic
Hi there,
This topic has been closed and archived due to inactivity or violation of community quality standards. No more replies are possible here.
Where to now? Join ongoing discussions on thousands of quality questions in our Verbal Questions Forum
Still interested in this question? Check out the "Best Topics" block above for a better discussion on this exact question, as well as several more related questions.
Thank you for understanding, and happy exploring!
Moderators:
miag
189 posts
u1983
Current Student
710 posts
MikeScarn
Current Student
275 posts