“the most prominent exhibit to be seen is/are the governor’s living quarters.”
which do you think sounds better?
i know the subject is singular. but the plural complement seems to call for a plural.
“Is”.
Compare sentences like
“The biggest problem we had to contend with was the students’ frequent rowdy parties.”
or
“Our favorite vacation memory is the repeated visits of the shy but lovely roe deer to our cabin site.”
The number of the verb needs to follow the number of the subject in these examples, not the predicate.
ok, that’s always been my feeling, i have been contaminated by too much Spanish where the verb form will oft times follow the predicate
Yeah, in this sentence, definitely singular ‘is’ sounds better (this is as much a question of what sounds good as what is logically correct). It’s perhaps partly because of the way that “the governor’s” comes right after the verb, so the listener tends to want the verb to agree with the singular “governor” (even though strictly grammatically that’s not correct), and partly because “living quarters” can be easily thought of as a single thing.
If the thing to be seen was more clearly plural – paintings, for instance, then I would try and avoid the question, either by making the thing singular using a group word
“The most prominent exhibit to be seen is the collection of paintings”
or by making the whole sentence plural
“The most prominent exhibits to be seen are the paintings”
I don’t think it’s the word “governor’s” that’s causing the problem: it’s the word “quarters” – that’s an odd word, since it’s a plural but has a singular meaning (like “trousers”). If the sentence were:
The most prominent exhibit to be seen is the governor’s house.
then the word “is” sounds much more correct. But it’s correct with “quarters” too, since “exhibit” is the main noun in the subject.
The most prominent exhibit to be seen is the governor’s trousers.
The sentence shouldn’t be considered in isolation but in the context of what is surrounding it.
If you’re trying to emphasize that the governor’s quarters are a series of rooms in which the governor performed various functions, then you would use the plural. If you’re trying to indicate that visitors should think of the site as a whole, then you would use the singular.
Don’t look for a rule to be imposed. Always look at the context and what you want the reader to take away.
That’s good advice about how to structure the description as a whole, but I don’t think it really helps much in determining whether to use a singular or plural verb in this particular sentence.
No matter how much I wanted to emphasize the plural nature of the governor’s living quarters, I wouldn’t write
“the most prominent exhibit to be seen are the governor’s living quarters”,
because it just sounds weird and wrong. It would sound equally weird to use a plural verb with that subject even if the predicate were more obviously plural in form, as in
“the most prominent exhibit to be seen are the governor’s books” or
“the most prominent exhibit to be seen are the governor’s curio cabinets”.
If I really felt I had to use a plural verb, I’d change the subject noun to “exhibits” instead of “exhibit”.
Only in Arkansas and South Carolina.
For some things I would agree, but not here. In standard English the verb always follows the subject for singular/plural, regardless of context or emphasis.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/599/01/
http://www.towson.edu/ows/sub-verb.htm
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/subverag.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/grammar/sentencebasics/verbsubjectagreement/factsheet1.shtml
I do agree if this were a grammar test. It didn’t sound like one, though. If this is a real-world setting then the entire paragraph needs to be structured to give the proper information. If that means rethinking the sentence, let the context direct the structure.
Maybe I missed your point, but in any case it would be wrong to say “The exhibit are…”.
If a shift in emphasis is needed then, yes, I would look at a rewrite such as:
The governor’s living quarters are the most prominent exhibit to be seen.
Although I guess we could then have this discussion about whether “quarters” is plural or collective (I don’t really know).
The subject of the sentence (exhibit) is singular, so the verb takes the singular form as well. If you wish to emphasize that there were multiple quarters or in some other way indicate plurality of the direct object (quarters) then you should rephrase the sentence so that “quarters” is the subject.
I know a lot of people get all in a huff about prescriptive grammar, but I think this is a case where there is no prevailing contrary usage, so no good reason to alter the consensus grammar form.
Right. The reason why grammar rules come in handy in situations like this is not because they allow us to say “Look, dope, there’s an official rule for these constructions and you must follow the official rule!”, but rather because they give us another tool for understanding the common usage.
The reason we shouldn’t say “The most prominent exhibit to be seen are the governor’s living quarters” is not so much because it violates an official rule about subject-verb agreement, as because it just sounds wrong and confusing and incoherent.
The rule about subject-verb agreement simply helps us grasp why it sounds wrong and incoherent.
Now you understand the writing process! What a joy to read that! I wish I had a glass of brandy and smoked a cigar!