MGMAT SC, V.5 chapter 11. Q 10

[MoussaR234]

This question is from MGMAT SC, V.5 chapter 11. Q 10

"The young bride, as well as her husband, were amazed BY the generosity of the wedding guests."

The obvious issue here is the subject verb agreement (was/were), but I am struggling to choose between "BY" and "because".

You have mentioned in the book that we should use BY only when referring to the actual doer of the action, not the means or instruments. Should we consider the GENEROSITY the doer? or the actual doer are guests?

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

this is a normal passive construction.
The guests' generosity amazed them. <--> They were amazed by the guests' generosity.

the generosity (not the guests themselves) is the thing that was amazing.

[CrystalL527]

On the 6th Edition, Page 175, Q1, I don't quite understand why it suggests using "was", rather than "were"?

I thought the young bride and her husband were amazed by the .....

Also, Q6, neither his sons nor his daughter "was" interested, why not using "were" here ?

[Chelsey Cooley]

Q1: Be pickier about what the sentence literally says, not what it logically means. When you find subject-verb agreement you have to ignore modifiers that come between the subject and the verb. In this case, the verb is 'were' and the subject is 'bride'; 'as well as her husband' is just a modifier and can be ignored. This is tricky because you want to go with logic, since it makes sense that we're talking about multiple people and would need a plural, but it's just not how agreement works here. If something is in a modifier, it's not really part of the subject.

Q6: 'neither/nor' and 'either/or' constructions can be either singular or plural. It depends on whether the noun closest to the verb is singular or plural. In your example, the construction is singular, since 'daughter' is singular, so you'd use the singular 'was'.