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Zorluk: ZorSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Which of the following options best completes the sentence below?

Not only the principal investigator but also two-thirds of the laboratory technicians who conducted the trial _______ that the experimental vaccine requires further refinement.

  1. insistCevap
  2. B
    insists
  3. C
    has insisted
  4. D
    is insisting

Cevap

The correct verb form is 'insist'.
The correct answer is the plural verb form because when subject elements are linked by the correlative conjunction 'not only... but also...', grammatical rule dictates that the verb agrees with the closer subject. Here, the closer subject is 'two-thirds of the laboratory technicians'. For fractional expressions, agreement depends on the noun following 'of'. Because 'laboratory technicians' is a plural countable noun, the verb must be plural ('insist').

Adım Adım Çözüm

1
Analyze the correlative conjunction structure.
In sentences joined by 'not only... but also...', the verb must agree in number with the subject element closer to the verb.
The closer subject following 'but also' is 'two-thirds of the laboratory technicians who conducted the trial'.
2
Determine the number of the fractional subject.
The fraction 'two-thirds' modifies 'laboratory technicians', which is a plural countable noun. Therefore, the subject phrase is plural.
Fractional and percentage expressions take singular or plural verbs based on the noun following the preposition 'of'.
3
Select the verb that agrees with the plural head noun while avoiding intervening singular noun traps.
The plural present tense verb 'insist' correctly agrees with 'technicians', disregarding the singular noun 'trial' in the relative clause.
Subject-verb concord is governed by the head noun of the subject phrase, not by intervening nouns in relative clauses.

Anahtar Kavram

Correlative Conjunction Concord and Fractional Subject Agreement
Bu soruyu puanla

Konular

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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