Subject / verb agreement - Tutors please help - urgent

[Gaurav]

Hi .... .. I have framed a general doubt which I have. I have my Gmat in a weeks time so i'm desperately looking forward to a quick reply ... Tutors please do clarify .... thanks in advance

"One of the"

1. One of the students is going to the market ...
2. One of the students who is/are going to the market does not have any money.

Am sure 1 is correct.
2 should have is or are ?

3. NY is one of the states that permit/permits gambling ? Which one here permit or permits ?

If pronouns like that, which, who follow "one of the As" then will the verb immediately after the pronoun always be plural ?


<Singular Noun> + of + <Plural Noun>

Will a pronoun following the above construction always have the immediate verb in plural form ?? Can it sometimes be in the singular form referring to the singular noun rather than the plural noun ???


1. The patchwork of fields that surround / surrounds the village is filled with people


Will it be surround or surrounds ?

Would highly appreciate if anyone could respond

[RonPurewal]

ok:

1. One of the students is going to the market ...
2. One of the students who is/are going to the market does not have any money.

Am sure 1 is correct.
2 should have is or are ?

(2) should be 'are', because the modifier (which doesn't have a comma) is understood to modify the plural noun 'students'.
if you want to refer to the single student, then add a comma: one of the students, who is going to the market, doesn't have any money.
(...then why is he going to the market?)

3. NY is one of the states that permit/permits gambling ? Which one here permit or permits ?

plural, for the same reason as the sentence above.
unlike the sentence above, i don't see any easy way to modify this sentence to incorporate a singular verb: the sentence clearly indicates that there's a set of states that permit gambling, and n.y. happens to be one of them.

If pronouns like that, which, who follow "one of the As" then will the verb immediately after the pronoun always be plural ?

for pronouns that don't follow commas, such as 'that' (which is NOT ALLOWED to follow a comma when it serves as a relative pronoun), you look at the noun that's immediately adjacent on the left.
for pronouns that follow commas, you look at the principal subject of the phrase to the left (see the example with the market, to which i added a comma, above).

<Singular Noun> + of + <Plural Noun>

Will a pronoun following the above construction always have the immediate verb in plural form ?? Can it sometimes be in the singular form referring to the singular noun rather than the plural noun ???

no.
if there is no relative clause (i.e., the construction above is the subject of a verb), then the verb will always be singular (except in the cases outlined below), because 'of xxxxx' is a prepositional phrase that doesn't have any bearing on the verb.
exception: the only exception occurs when the singular noun is an aggregating noun, such as 'set', 'collection', 'patchwork', or the like. in these cases, as with the problem in this thread, the interpretation can go either way, depending on the context.

1. The patchwork of fields that surround / surrounds the village is filled with people


Will it be surround or surrounds ?

Would highly appreciate if anyone could respond

could be either.
it could make sense to say that the patchwork surrounds the village (= singular verb), but it could conceivably also make sense to say that the fields themselves surround the village (= plural verb).
if i had to say, i'd go with the singular verb, because there's really no need to mention the patchwork at all if the intended message is that the fields themselves surround the village.

in any case, if you have the type of ambiguity seen here, you should give up trying to decide between the alternatives and look for other criteria on which to base your decision.

[yi_guang]

<Singular Noun> + of + <Plural Noun>

Will a pronoun following the above construction always have the immediate verb in plural form ?? Can it sometimes be in the singular form referring to the singular noun rather than the plural noun ???

no.
if there is no relative clause (i.e., the construction above is the subject of a verb), then the verb will always be singular (except in the cases outlined below), because 'of xxxxx' is a prepositional phrase that doesn't have any bearing on the verb.
exception: the only exception occurs when the singular noun is an aggregating noun, such as 'set', 'collection', 'patchwork', or the like. in these cases, as with the problem in this thread, the interpretation can go either way, depending on the context.

Hi Ron, then why is "one of the students who are going to the market..." correct?

[tim]

Read Ron's post; he told you exactly why it is correct..