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Sub-Verb agreement

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Sub-Verb agreement

by bizzzschool » Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:19 pm
I was doing a sentence correction problem and had a question about the subject-verb agreement of the part at the beginning (not underlined). It is #17 in the GMAT 11th edition guide. It says:

"None of the attempts to specify the causes of crime explains why most of the people exposed to the alleged causes do not commit crimes and, conversely, why so many of those not so exposed have."

(Answer: Have ---> do) I understand the parallelism of the answer do and do.

My question is about "None of the attempts to specify the causes of crime explains". Why is it explains and not explain? I understand SANAM and therefore, we look past attempts, but I do not see clearly what we are looking for to singular plural. I guess it is crime, which is singular, which warrants explains. Is that correct?

Thank you for your help.
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by scoobydooby » Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:52 pm
"None of the attempts to specify the causes of crime explains why most of the people exposed to the alleged causes do not commit crimes and, conversely, why so many of those not so exposed have."

none is the subject of the sentence, (none=not one) is singular and therefore takes singular verbs
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by bizzzschool » Sat Mar 21, 2009 7:06 pm
Thank you for your reply. However, I am still confused by this.

My book says that if an indefinite pronoun was the subject (ie None, Any, Some, All, Most or SANAM), then it could be either singular or plural depending on context. To figure out if it is singular or plural, you are supposed to look at the of-phrase after the pronoun, which is usually ignored. You then find the object of the of-phrase to determine if the verb is singular or plural.

with this example: "None of the attempts to specify the causes of crime explains..." If we look at the of-phrase, I guess the object has to be specify, as attempts and causes are both plural. If it is specify, how would you know that that is the word that you should look at?

Also, if None IS the subject, why does SANAM not hold true here?

Thank you!

Mike
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