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Anonymous Posted 14 years ago
Grammar
was/were
To her, an education in science and math was/were not instrumental to ballet. Is the subject "education" making it singular or a compound subject of education in science and education in math making it plural?
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And thank you.
Help!
And thank you.
Top answer
To her, an education in science and math was/ were not instrumental to ballet. The subject in full is the underlined noun phrase , which has the singular noun education as its head. It's the head of a subject noun phrase that (in most cases) determines the form of the verb for number purposes , thus singular was is correct .
- To her, an education in science and math was/ were not instrumental to ballet.
- The subject in full is the underlined noun phrase , which has the singular noun education as its head.
- It's the head of a subject noun phrase that (in most cases) determines the form of the verb for number purposes , thus singular was is correct .
- The preposition phrase in science and math functions as a modifier of the head noun education ; it plays no part in determining the form of the verb.
- BillJ
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1 Answers
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To her, an education in science and math was/were not instrumental to ballet.
The subject in full is the underlined noun phrase, which has the singular noun education as its head. It's the head of a subject noun phrase that (in most cases) determines the form of the verb for number purposes, thus singular was is correct.
The subject in full is the underlined noun phrase, which has the singular noun education as its head. It's the head of a subject noun phrase that (in most cases) determines the form of the verb for number purposes, thus singular was is correct.
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