Sentence Correction

"He is one of the persons who bakes special cakes."

lunarpower wrote:

sk8ternite wrote:On one of the GMAT flash cards created by this site, it states that:

One of the + PLURAL NOUN + THAT/WHO + SINGULAR VERB.
"He is one of the persons who bakes special cakes." (beat the gmat notes)

Is this correct, I thought the proper structure was

One of the + PLURAL NOUN + that/who + PLURAL VERB
"He is one of the persons who make money." (Sahil Notes)

Please clarify?

you are correct. see above.

you may want to double-check to make sure that the card didn't say "THE ONLY ONE". if that's the case, then the verb should indeed be singular.

the following examples are both correct:
(1) he is one of the people who bake special cakes.
(2) he is the only one of the people who bakes special cakes.

this actually isn't as hard as pure memorization might make it seem: all you have to do is think about the LITERAL MEANING of what you're writing.
in my #1, there are lots of people who bake special cakes, so "bake" should be plural.
in my #2, the man in question is the ONLY person who bakes special cakes, so the verb should be singular.

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here's another way to think about it: you can DECONSTRUCT the sentence, and tell exactly which noun / construction the verb "belongs" to. (i have no idea whether this is a formal grammar concept or not, but it works.)

in my #1:
PEOPLE bake cakes. (--> plural "bake")
he is one of them.
(he is not "one who bakes cakes")

in my #2:
there are a bunch of PEOPLE.
he is THE ONE who BAKES cakes. (--> singular "bakes")
(there are not "people who bake cakes")

hope this helps

lunarpower wrote:

goelmohit2002 wrote:But the above question seems not be following this case....can u please tell what indeed is the case ?

no, the above question follows the same rule. it's actually our question (i.e., written by mgmat). the correct answer is (b).

i'll go post something over on that thread, even though it's already 3 pages long.

lunarpower wrote:@ goelmohit

i'll address this list, but i'll give you a warning / suggestion first.

CAVEAT:
this is one of those things that is RIDICULOUSLY hard to memorize, but is actually pretty easy just to deduce from context. so, unless you're prepared to memorize a whole lot of easily confused, easily forgotten rules that are extremely subtle, you should just think about the context and go from there.

* for instance, given
X is only one of the factors, albeit an important one, that (keep/keeps) the market from spinning out of control
it's clear that there are MANY factors, ALL of which keep the market from doing blah blah blah, and that X is just one of them.
since there are MANY factors keeping...., we should use the plural "keep".

* on the other hand, given
X is the only one of the factors that (keep/keeps) the market from spinning out of control
it's clear that there are many factors, but NONE OF THEM EXCEPT X keeps the market from doing blah blah blah.
since X is the ONLY factor keeping...., we should use the singular "keeps".

in 99.9% of these, you'll be able to just think about the context in this way, saving yourself a horrendous amount of time and effort.

--

nevertheless, IF you still feel like k!II!ng yourself with memorization, then i'll indulge you.

1. One of the Xs that/who <plural>

if this is NOT preceded by "the" or "the ADJ", then this is always plural.
(context hint: if there's no "the" or "the ADJ", then there are many X's who do this)

2. One of the Xs <singular>

if this is "one of the Xs VERB"
and NOT one of the Xs THAT verb",
then yes, this is always singular.
(context hint: nothing to indicate that any of the other Xs do this; only one is known to do it)

3. only One of the Xs <singular>

correct, as long as it's not "only one of the X's THAT..."

4. only One of the Xs that/who <singular>

this is 2 different cases.

if it's "THE only one of the X's that/who...", then it should be SINGULAR.

if it's JUST "only one of the X's that/who...", then it should be PLURAL.

--

let me emphasize again that memorizing these rules is about 65,535 times as hard as deducing the correct form from context.

et me emphasize again that memorizing these rules is about 65,535 times as hard as deducing the correct form from context.

CAVEAT:
this is one of those things that is RIDICULOUSLY hard to memorize, but is actually pretty easy just to deduce from context. so, unless you're prepared to memorize a whole lot of easily confused, easily forgotten rules that are extremely subtle, you should just think about the context and go from there.