Sentence Correction

Hi All,
Today I was reading an article on 'The Economist' which discussed about recent blast in US. The article's first line was:

"THE Tsarnaev family, like many families from Chechnya, were part of a diaspora that had scattered all over the globe: Turkey, Syria, Poland, and Austria, and, apparently, suburban Massachusetts."

As soon as I started reading I took 'The Tsarnaev family' as the subject and was expecting a singular verb. Clearly that wasn't the case. Am I missing something basic here? Is there any verbal rule that should be followed here?

Please find below the link to the article:https://www.economist.com/blogs/democrac ... bombings-2

Great catch - this type of thing trips us up all the time! Here's a good explanation of what's going on with that sentence: https://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/co ... nouns.aspx

We think that the gist of what the writer was saying was that "the members of the Tsarenaev family were scattered" - but we're not 100% sure. The side comment referencing "many families from Chechnya" implies that the intended meaning of 'diaspora' is 'all Chechen families' - not just the Tsarnaev family.

We tried to access the original article but now that link you provided is displaying something else, so we couldn't get more from the context. It seems odd to call one family a 'diaspora' so we're not convinced that we've got the writer's intentions down.

But that Grammar Girl article does explain how this could be acceptable usage, given the 'collective noun' thing.

It's sketchy to use the media to learn GMAT verbal rules though - many writers (EssaySnark included!!) take, shall we say, liberties with the English language. It's definitely useful to study this stuff though. Thanks for posting it!!

EssaySnark

Hi Essaysnark,
Thanks for the reply that was really helpful. I apologies for the wrong url, please find below the correct link:

https://www.economist.com/blogs/easterna ... politics-0

Cheers,
GG

Thanks for the updated link - that article has other craziness going on too! Check out this snippet:

[M]odern-day Chechens are a people that live outside their homeland as much as inside it.

EssaySnark is totally no expert on this but "a people" sure does sound odd. Maybe it's right, but it's weird. Regardless, it should it be "who live" instead of "that".

If you or anyone else can chime in on this stuff, we'd love to hear it!