One -Singular vs Plural

[sd]

With its plan to create a wildlife sanctuary out of previously unused landfill, Sweden is but one of a number of industrial nations that is accepting its responsibilty to protect endangeared species and promote conservation.

A)is accepting its responsibilty to protect endangeared species and promote
B)is accepting its responsiilty for protecting endageared species and promoting
C)are accepting its responsibility to protect endangeared species and promoting
D)are accepting of their responsibility to protectendangeared species and topromote
E)are accepting their responsibility to protect endangeared species and to promote

The source is Cracking the GMAT by Princeton. The OA is given as E.

Instructors, can you please explain......why E is wrong.

1) Isn't Sweden the subject here and hence shouldn't the answer begin with "is". How come 'A number of industrial nations" is the subject here?

2) I always get confused when 'One' is used in subject verb agreements. I have seen a post on this forum which says that with One, use singular only when there is a 'the' in the sentence. Is the correct answer here plural (are) only because there is no 'the' in this sentence.

I have read post, which clearly says that 'the' makes all the difference - general-verbal-questions-f2.html

3) Furthermore, the Manahattan SC guide clearly says that only for SANAM pronouns (Some, Any, None, All, More/Most), then subject in the prepositional phrase decides the verb. 'One' is not in the list of SANAM pronouns. So, how can the prepositional phrase 'OF a number if industrial nations' in the above sentence - "Sweden is but one of a number of industrial nations" decide the verb here.

Please HELP.....I always get these wrong, or get them right out of sheer luck...I DREAD the word 'One' when I see it in Sentence Correction questions.

[sunny.jain]

The answer has to be E.

Reason : Subject-verb agreement + Parallelism.

After reading the sentence, first thing that stroked my mind was 'parallelism'.

that is accepting its responsibilty
to protect endangeared species
and
?? promote conservation.

It should be 'to promote conservation.

I eliminated A,B,C on this basis.

Out of D and E.

by the What is the noun before 'that' in the sentence.
"nationS", a plural Noun.
so it is the subject of clause after 'that'.

out of D and E.
in D: 'accepting of' : wrong usage.
E is more concise and clear in meaning. So E is the answer.

In these type of Question, you don't need to put so much of your brain,
as there are clearly 2 splits giving you the clear answer.

[RonPurewal]

hi -

i don't usually cross-post, but i posted a very long, very definitive thread on this topic here:

http://www.beatthegmat.com/one-of-the-t ... tml#174075

check it out.

those rules are gospel. if they contradict what you've learned about sanam, then, in this case, ignore sanam.