S-V Agreement

[kedieez967]

This problem is from Manhattan Sentence Correction.

Although progress is still difficult to measure, the researchers have found that the benefit of applying interdisciplinary approaches and of fostering cooperation across multiple teams and divisions outweigh any potential cost.

Explanations in the book:
The sentence is incorrect, because "benefit" is singular, so "outweighs" is needed in the sentence.

But I have a little confusion about the problem.

Although progress is still difficult to measure, the researchers have found that the benefit of applying interdisciplinary approaches and (benefit) of fostering cooperation across multiple teams and divisions outweigh any potential cost.

another "benefit" is omitted in front of the second "of", so the sensible structure is that "benefit and benefit outweigh ... ", that is, the "outweigh" should be plural.

are there something wrong here? Many thanks for clarification.

[StaceyKoprince]

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I'll give you a brief answer here, but if you'd like to continue the discussion, you'll need to go post in the MPrep non-CAT folder.

In the sentence in question the word "benefit" is not actually repeated. The "and" connects the two modifiers and the parallelism signals that both refer back to the word "benefit" but it does not imply a repeat of the subject. The structure is:

The benefit [of X and of Y] outweighs the cost.

Both of those modifiers do refer back to benefit, but a sentence cannot "imply" a second subject that will then turn the sentence plural. If you see a structure like this one in future, the subject (in this case, "benefit") is only there once. If you're going to have an X and Y subject (two subjects), the X and Y words will actually be present in the sentence: The benefit gained from exercising daily and the benefit accrued from eating organic foods outweigh the time and money it costs to stay healthy.

Makes me curious now to know whether there are other languages in which that structure does mean a plural subject.