a grammar question

Question

First, read the following sentence: "What she thinks passes as 'food' made my brother ruin my good mood!"

Reading the sentence above, I believe 'ruin' above should changed into 'ruins'.

My parsing is as follows :
as / <-- conjunction
food made (by) my brother / <-- Singular subject
ruins / <-- Singular transitive verb
my good mood. / <-- The object of the verb 'ruins'

I do want to know whether I'm clear or not.

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

AnonymousReading the sentence above, I believe 'ruin' above should changed into 'ruins'.

No, the sentence is fine with "ruin."

My mother made me pick up my clothes.
My mother let me go to the movies with my friend.
I had my driver wait for me outside the bank while I cashed a check.

The verbs make, let and have are special verbs called "causative verbs" because they can cause another action. The second verb is always in the base form.

You have the verb "make" in your sentence, followed by "ruin."

What she thinks passes as 'food' made my brother ruin my good mood!

The underlined clause is the subject of "made."
SImplified:
It made my brother ruin my good mood. (Where It= what she thinks passes as 'food')
I think it means that the terrible food caused your brother to complain, and that ruined your good mood.

Anonymous · Answer

AlpheccaStarsWhere It= what she thinks passes as 'food'

Is "what" an object of "thinks" or "passes" in the above?

CalifJim · Answer

Anonymouswhat she thinks passes as 'food'

~ what passes as 'food' — in her opinion

In other words, she thinks (that) IT(=WHAT) passes as 'food'.

Thus, 'what' is the subject of the embedded clause that continues "passes as 'food'".

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you, CJ, for the reply.

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