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Prepositional Phrase

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Prepositional Phrase

by khandelwal.ab » Sat Sep 08, 2012 1:19 am
Hello experts! I came across the below sentence while reading an article in NYtimes:

Eighty percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States goes to chicken, pigs, cows and other animals that people eat, yet producers of meat and poultry are not required to report how they use the drugs

The bold part of the above scentence was quickly caught by my ear. goes does not agree with "antibiotics". But on looking at the bold part again I got confused whether the subject is antibiotics or Eighty percent.

Since eighty percent of antibiotics is a prepositional phrase we can possibly ignore the part after 'of' and consider eighty percent as the subject (which will make the subject singular)??

I know for sure (by my ear) that the a plural form of the verb is required here,making the orignal sentence incorrect, but I am not sure that how exactly should we determine whether subjects such as the one in this sentence are singular or plural..

Thanks!
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by sam2304 » Sat Sep 08, 2012 6:07 am
Subjects can be a clause or a phrase which has both a subject and a verb in it. The example stated by you is similar to that.

Eighty percent of the antibiotics sold in the united states - this is a clause which has a subject (Eighty percent of the antibiotics) and a verb (sold) in it. Together they make a subject clause and it always uses a singular verb. Hence 'goes' is right here.
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by khandelwal.ab » Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:35 am
Thanks for responding Sam...even I have heard that 'subject clause generally take singular verbs'. However I am not entirely sure about the application of the rule..

But I still don't believe that the original sentence sentence would use the singular 'goes'. Here is why:

Consider the following sentence: ten percent of the children living in the united states is or are obese.

What will you chose in the above sentence is or are?

The same logic makes me believe that the original sentence should take the plural go. I think we should wait for an expert to clear the air..
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by confuse mind » Sat Sep 08, 2012 7:44 pm
10% of the children - plural
10% of water - singular
10% of food - singular
10% of measles - singular

10% of antibiotics - singular

you can't count antibiotics, you can't say 1 antibiotic, 2 antibiotic,...
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by khandelwal.ab » Sun Sep 09, 2012 3:13 am
confuse mind wrote:10% of the children - plural
10% of water - singular
10% of food - singular
10% of measles - singular

10% of antibiotics - singular

you can't count antibiotics, you can't say 1 antibiotic, 2 antibiotic,...
Most antibiotics are not good for health.

I would for sure use an are, not an is in the above sentence.
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by sam2304 » Sun Sep 09, 2012 7:18 pm
khandelwal.ab wrote:Thanks for responding Sam...even I have heard that 'subject clause generally take singular verbs'. However I am not entirely sure about the application of the rule..

But I still don't believe that the original sentence sentence would use the singular 'goes'. Here is why:

Consider the following sentence: ten percent of the children living in the united states is or are obese.

What will you chose in the above sentence is or are?

The same logic makes me believe that the original sentence should take the plural go. I think we should wait for an expert to clear the air..
Ten percent of the children living in the united stated are obese would be my answer to your question.

Two reasons why the sentence feels right to me.

1. When it comes to usage of numbers the subject is what follows after the prepositional phrase based on this rule available from MGMAT. The rule is applicable to our example as the sentence uses percents.
In many idiomatic expressions that designate qyantities or parts such as a number of, the subject of the sentence is in an Of prepositional phrase. These expressions provide the exception to the rule that the subject cannot be in a prepositional phrase. We have seen the SANAM pronouns as examples of this phenomenon. Other examples include fractions and percents.
2. Antibiotics seems to be one of the collective nouns which can take both singular and plural form [I am not very sure about this, but it seems so] Maybe an expert can confirm this. Fish, hay are some of the collective nouns which are both singular and plural.

These are completely my opinions and my attempts to know what makes this sentence right. But I would suggest you to refrain from non GMAT materials for sentence correction problems. The time spent on analyzing this problem, which we are not sure whether it is right or not, can be spent on one official problem and learn something useful.
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