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New businesses

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by gmat009 » Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:30 pm
One of every two new businesses fail within two years.
(A) fail
(B) fails
(C) should fail
(D) may have failed
(E) has failed

OA is B but according to me it should be A.
One of the .......+ PLURAL
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Source: — Sentence Correction |
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by 4meonly » Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:06 am
One ... new business fails ....

not
.... every two new businesses fail .....
Last edited by 4meonly on Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by s_kaks » Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:09 am
One is singular hence should be followed by fails.

hence B
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by gmat009 » Wed Sep 24, 2008 7:19 am
I am still not convinces about answers.
Can anyone plz. explain this.
OA can be wrong .
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by iamafreak » Wed Sep 24, 2008 2:50 pm
OA is not wrong. Answer is A only.

If i say "One of them" then is it singular or plural?

which of the following sentences is correct?

One of them is going to the movie.

or

One of them are going to movie.


i think this should have explained.
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by amitabhprasad » Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:35 pm
Other thing to remember is in this sentence "every" precedes verb "fail" Under that condition verb should be singular.
So "A" is correct.
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by iamafreak » Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:01 pm
^^^ yes, that's true
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by Stacey Koprince » Wed Oct 01, 2008 7:05 am
I received a PM asking me to respond to this.

One of <anything> is singular. First, we should generally ignore prepositional phrases when determining a subject, and "of <anything>" is a prepositional phrase. Second, you can also ask yourself "what fail or fails?" The sentence is trying to say that "one fails," NOT that "two fail."

If you had "Two of every five..." then you'd say "two fail."
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by mberkowitz » Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:18 pm
the rule gmat009 is referring to is when two singular nouns are connected by "and" the following verb becomes plural. the rule is not appropriate in this case.
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by eshahid » Sun Oct 05, 2008 6:38 am
More than often 'of' is just a middle man and we should be beware of 'of'.
And as pointed out by stacey it suggests the starting of a prepositional phrase.

Only for pronouns Some, any, none, all, most the 'of' construction decides the verb number.
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