Quick question on Subject Verb agreement

[roshni.patram]

Hi,

I have a quick question on Subject Verb agreement - this is not from any particular source.

Sorry if this is question seems trivial.

Say for example, we are to combine the neither/nor rule and the any rule.

Neither/Nor rule: determined by the subject closest to verb.

Any: Part of SANAM - depends on the subject of the prep- phrase.

Just wanted to check if the following sentence is correct?

Neither Tom nor any of his friends were able to solve the hard problem.

Here,"any of his friends" is plural because friends is plural,

Is my reasoning correct?

Thanks very much.

[saxenankit]

To me, the construction sounds error free as per the rules.

Although, lets get a confirmation from anyone of the instructors.

[tim]

"any of his friends" is not plural because "friends" is plural; instead, it is plural because "any" is plural in this context. aside from the reasoning, the sentence looks correct..

[roshni.patram]

Thanks for pointing that out. I shall try to remember the rule differently.

[saxenankit]

"any of his friends" is not plural because "friends" is plural; instead, it is plural because "any" is plural in this context. aside from the reasoning, the sentence looks correct..

"any" is plural because of "friends", right Tim ?

Isn't the below sentence correct ?

Neither Tom nor any of his friend was able to solve the hard problem.

[RonPurewal]

eh
"any of PLURAL NOUN" can definitely be singular; this is more or less completely dependent on context.
for example,
any of these women is a suitable candidate for marriage to my son
should obviously take this singular, since we are referring to exactly one of the women at a time.

in general, the rules given in the SC guide for "sanam" pronouns are much too inflexible; we are going to edit that information in the next edition.
or, we may just remove the information entirely, because it has so far been completely irrelevant to the test.
* total number of times "any" is tested in og12: zero
* total number of times "any" is tested in 2nd ed verbal supplement: zero
* total number of times "any" is tested in the GMATPrep SC's of the last three years: zero

the same goes for "none", whose only appearance in the official guides is in a non-underlined part (in problem 22). incidentally, that one appearance also violates the "sanam" rule (in that example, none + of + plural is singular, not plural).

... so these pronouns aren't worth worrying about. their usage is hotly contested among experts on the english language, so there's no way they are going to be tested (thus explaining their very conspicuous absence from the official SC problems -- these are all very common words, so it's clear that they have been omitted on purpose.)