Foundations of GMAT Verbal (page 69) Drill 4.4 Question 1

[kyen09]

Question 1

"The editor of the newspaper would later make his reputation as a union firebrand."

If I take out the prepositional phrases "of the newspaper" and " as a union firebrand".

The sentence would be "The editor would later make his reputation"

I thought the sentence would be incorrect because the word "make" should be "makes", since the subject-verb agreement for a singular verb generally ends with an -s. However, when I checked the solution on the back, it showed that the sentence is correct as it is.

Could you explain to me why "make" is the correct form and if this is the exception to the rule, how is it apply?

[tim]

This is not an exception; that's just how this particular verb tense is conjugated in the singular:

He makes
He would make

Ask yourself if it would sound right to say "he would makes". If it does, you'll want to do a careful review of verb tenses and their conjugations.

[kyen09]

To simply state the answer "as the way it is" or "sound right" is really not helpful. Clarification would be helpful. People don't use the forum to ask serious questions to get such a sloppy answer.

Again, I'll ask my question.

I understand that it just sounds "wrong" to say "he would makes", but what is the specific reason behind it? Can you give me another example?

Does any of the Manhattan GMAT book cover this specific issue?

If the problem is with my verb tenses and their conjugations, can you specify the type I am having issues with? Not sure if that's possible, but that will definitely reduce my time of searching for the correct solution.

[jlucero]

Let's be kind on the forum: remember this is a free resource where moderators are responding to hundreds of questions each month- sometimes we don't get your questions exactly right the first time. As Tim said, it's a different tense- it's called the past future tense, which expresses something would happen from some past point. It is a tense that requires an auxiliary verb (would) plus a verb that does not normally sound right without the auxiliary verb. Since linguists can't even agree on all the different English tenses, we can't possibly cover all of them in the SC guide and focus on just the ones that show up most commonly. The past future is on but a few GMAT questions and I believe that the one you are referring to doesn't even have a split on that verb (though I don't have the problem in front of me). For more info on this tense, check out:

http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/futureinpast.html

[tim]

Kyen, please note that I directly tied your question to an explanation for why the answer is resolved a certain way (proper verb conjugations) and a suggestion for further improvement (studying verbs and their conjugations) that you could embark on if your intuition does not get you to the correct answer. Joe is right; there are too many verb tenses for us to cover them all in the books when a given student's experience with the English language will yield the correct answer most of the time with a sufficiently simplified example. As such, my reference to verb conjugations was the most specific guidance I could give without becoming irrelevant.