mikemcgarry wrote:
Why the various Generals of the Army of the Potomac before Ulysses S. Grant were so singularly unsuccessful against Robert E Lee are debated about in no less than five hundred historically oriented journals.
(A) are debated about in no less than
(B) are debated in no less than
(C) is debated about in no fewer than
(D) is debated in no fewer than
(E) is debated in no less thanFor a complete discussion of substantive clauses (a.k.a nominal clauses, a.k.a noun clauses) ---including the very tricky issue of noun-clauses and subject-verb agreement --- as well as a full explanation of this particular question, see this blog:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/substantiv ... -the-gmat/Mike
is vs are split, debated about vs debated in and less vs fewer
the entire clause starting from Why the varous.................................. to Lee is
Substantive clause nad substantive clause is always singular. hence A nad B are out.
Now come to another split debated about vs debated in
debated about is unidiomatic.
for countable things we use fewer and for uncountable we use less
Here we have journals and is countable hence C and E are out and we are left with D
and D is indeed our answer