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S/V agreement question from HBR article < need expert hel

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by voodoo_child » Tue Sep 06, 2011 10:54 am
One thing I learned before I became a director is that there are an abundance of board readiness events for newbies like me.

Shouldn't the verb be IS? There is an abundance of X?

Source :Harvard Business Review (for those of you who care about the source :) https://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/09/quotas_ ... s_are.html)

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by aspirant2011 » Tue Sep 06, 2011 11:17 am
voodoo_child wrote:One thing I learned before I became a director is that there are an abundance of board readiness events for newbies like me.

Shouldn't the verb be IS? There is an abundance of X?

We have already used verb is (marked in green above) & second verb after there should be are only Because subject for this verb is abundance of board readiness events

I hope I am clear


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by vzzai » Tue Sep 06, 2011 11:42 pm
I agree with you. GMAT rules don't apply to HBR articles. :)
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by dinaroneo » Tue Sep 06, 2011 11:50 pm
We have already used verb is (marked in green above) & second verb after there should be are only Because subject for this verb is: abundance of board readiness events
Agree with aspirant2011, the verb should be are here.
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by tpr-becky » Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:29 am
While the GMAT rules don't always apply to writing (in fact many writers break basic grammar rules every day) in this question the are is appropriate.

One thing ... is ... (this is the basic sentence and the "is" is correct because it refers to "one thing") However in the phrase "that there are an abundance...of events" in this case "are" is correct because it refers to abundance of events, a plural noun. Is would have been appropriate if it had said "there is one event for ...."
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by voodoo_child » Wed Sep 07, 2011 5:45 am
tpr-becky wrote:While the GMAT rules don't always apply to writing (in fact many writers break basic grammar rules every day) in this question the are is appropriate.

One thing ... is ... (this is the basic sentence and the "is" is correct because it refers to "one thing") However in the phrase "that there are an abundance...of events" in this case "are" is correct because it refers to abundance of events, a plural noun. Is would have been appropriate if it had said "there is one event for ...."


Becky - I have a different opinion but please correct me if I am wrong.

"Are" would have been correct if "abundance" was used as an adjective. e..g there are abundant reality TV shows aired nowadays.

However, in the above example "abundance" is used as a noun. Example : There is an abundance of TV shows aired on CNN.

Correct?

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by badpoem » Wed Sep 07, 2011 5:50 am
@tpr-becky

I am no expert but correct me if i am wrong. Isn't "an abundance" supposed to be a denoting a collection?

Say for example, An abundance of knowledge. We certainly do not say "There are an abundance of knowledge"

There are events

but

There IS an abundance of events. Strictly my personal opinion but as I said, do correct me.
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