0
Victo Posted 13 years ago
Grammar
Proximal Concord?
Hi. The sentence below is somewhat problematic, at least to me.
A large number of voters still votes/vote along straight-party lines.
The answer was: Number is a collective noun, but the elements within the collective noun, the voters, are acting separately in this case, so the verb should be plural: vote.
I'm not sure whether the answer is based upon proximal concord, but it appears as though the correct answer would be "votes" because "voters" is the object of the preposition of.
A large number . . . votes.
Would you opt for vote or votes?
Thank you.
A large number of voters still votes/vote along straight-party lines.
The answer was: Number is a collective noun, but the elements within the collective noun, the voters, are acting separately in this case, so the verb should be plural: vote.
I'm not sure whether the answer is based upon proximal concord, but it appears as though the correct answer would be "votes" because "voters" is the object of the preposition of.
A large number . . . votes.
Would you opt for vote or votes?
Thank you.
Top answer
A number of is always plural, so vote is correct.
- A number of is always plural, so vote is correct.
Get the Weekly English Kit 📬
New words, one handy idiom, and a 2-minute quiz — delivered to your inbox to keep your streak alive.
4 Answers
0
0
victoI'm not sure whether the answer is based upon proximal concordNo. That's got little to do with it. These are simply fixed:
The number of ... is ...
A number of ... are ...
CJ
00
It seems to me that voters is plural. It doesn't matter whether it's two voters, two million voters, some voters, a few voters, a lot of voters, a large number of voters, voters is plural.
00
A number of means several. If several is substituted for a number of, it is easy to remember that a plural verb is needed.
0
Related Questions