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"Majority" singular or plural?

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"Majority" singular or plural?

by arora007 » Sun Jun 06, 2010 7:57 am
Here is a question from the.
McGraw Hill conquering GMAT Verbal & Writing
Of which i have doubts in explanation.

In the early 1970s and 1980s, a majority of NewYork City's night clubs
was packed with devotees of salsa, but the trendy nature of the craze
and the changing demographics of the city were factors in the dance's
downfall.

"Majority" is the subject and is singular.

I believe that the sentence should be restated as,

In the early 1970s and 1980s, a majority of NewYork City's night clubs
were packed with devotees of salsa, but the trendy nature of the craze
and the changing demographics of the city were factors in the dance's
downfall.

Is the book correct and I am mistaken or is it otherwise, if you could please explain....
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by uwhusky » Sun Jun 06, 2010 10:31 am
According to Manhattan SC book in chapter 3, the words majority, minority and plurality are either singular or plural, depending on their context.

In this case, it appears that the subject is to indicate the totality itself, which is New York City's night clubs, and thus according to MGMAT SC, the usage of singular is correct. But then again, maybe I do not completely understand the explanation, because in the subsequent explanation, the noun in the of-prepositional phase is suppose to be representative of singular or plural. So maybe you are right, it should be plural.

Experts, please help!
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by FightWithGMAT » Sun Jun 06, 2010 11:19 am
arora007 wrote:Here is a question from the.
McGraw Hill conquering GMAT Verbal & Writing
Of which i have doubts in explanation.

In the early 1970s and 1980s, a majority of NewYork City's night clubs
was packed with devotees of salsa, but the trendy nature of the craze
and the changing demographics of the city were factors in the dance's
downfall.

"Majority" is the subject and is singular.

I believe that the sentence should be restated as,

In the early 1970s and 1980s, a majority of NewYork City's night clubs
were packed with devotees of salsa, but the trendy nature of the craze
and the changing demographics of the city were factors in the dance's
downfall.

Is the book correct and I am mistaken or is it otherwise, if you could please explain....
I think, irrespective of the explanation given by multiple sources, answer can be given with logic.

Article "a" is enough to make the subject singular.
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by uwhusky » Sun Jun 06, 2010 3:28 pm
After some more thoughts, I think you are right. Using Manhattan SC's explanation, this should be plural as oppose to singular.
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by haveto » Sun Jun 06, 2010 4:51 pm
It should be plural here.
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by er_priyankajolly » Sun Jun 06, 2010 5:43 pm
The usage of plural is correct here because in the sentence given above majority refers to number of night clubs out of the total

when we talk of a number out of total for majority then we use plural.But we want to talk about a collective group then we use singular.
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by satinder kaur » Mon Feb 03, 2014 12:22 pm
uwhusky wrote:According to Manhattan SC book in chapter 3, the words majority, minority and plurality are either singular or plural, depending on their context.

In this case, it appears that the subject is to indicate the totality itself, which is New York City's night clubs, and thus according to MGMAT SC, the usage of singular is correct. But then again, maybe I do not completely understand the explanation, because in the subsequent explanation, the noun in the of-prepositional phase is suppose to be representative of singular or plural. So maybe you are right, it should be plural.

Experts, please help!


As I can see the complete Sentence is talking about the city .. hence it should be singular. As per my understanding the usage of majority is context based and can be identified if we read the comeplet sentence.
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by [email protected] » Mon Feb 03, 2014 2:41 pm
Hi satinder kaur,

You are correct. The GMAT does tend to present certain grammar patterns worth noting though:

Here, the phrase "a majority of...night clubs...." is singular. While "night clubs" is plural, the sentence shifted the subject to the phrase "a majority..." which is singular (the word "a" is the clue). You'll likely see this type of shift at least once in the Verbal section.

Other examples:
A group of employees is singular
A team of athletes is singular
etc.

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by siddhu161 » Tue Feb 04, 2014 4:36 am
Hi,
One doubt related to this type.

A number of .. is plural whereas
The number of.. is singular..

[As given in Manhatten SC guide/chapter 3/page 46]
Isn't the similar rule applicable for this questions? OR a/the number is special type of sc questions?
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