Herbicide

[rkhicha]

The herbicide Oryzalin was still being produced in 1979, three years after the wives of workers producing the chemical in Rensselaer, New York, were found to have borne children with heart defects or miscarriages, and none of their pregnancies was normal.

(A) to have borne children with heart defects or miscarriages, and none of their
pregnancies was

(B) to have had children born with heart defects or miscarriages, and none of the
pregnancies was

(C) either to have had children with heart defects or miscarriages, without any of
their pregnancies being

(D) either to have had miscarriages or to have borne children with heart defects;
none of the pregnancies was

(E) either to have had miscarriages or children born with heart defects, without
any of their pregnancies being

[spoiler]OA is D.

The only problem i have with the OA is that because "pregnancies" is plural shouldn't the verb that follows be plural as well i.e. "were" instead of "was".

Have read up a few of the other explanations posted for this question before, but none of them are satisfactory. Hence the repost.[/spoiler]

Thanks.

[reply2spg]

Since you have was after none, then take granted that question is not checking subject and verb issue. It is checking something else.

D is good since it uses either or idiom properly.

[e-GMAT]

The herbicide Oryzalin was still being produced in 1979, three years after the wives of workers producing the chemical in Rensselaer, New York, were found to have borne children with heart defects or miscarriages, and none of their pregnancies was normal.

The only problem i have with the OA is that because "pregnancies" is plural shouldn't the verb that follows be plural as well i.e. "were" instead of "was".

Thanks.

Hi Rkhicha,

In this sentence, the subject is not pregnancies. The subject is "none of the pregnancies". Or read it as "Not one of the pregnancies". And thus this should be singular.

For additional reference see q#22 in OG12 in which the non-underlined portion uses singular verb for the subject "none of the attempts".

For e-GMAT Users, the concept of subject-verb number agreement as it relates to quantity prepositional phrases is covered in the concept titled "Subject-Verb - Words that Change Number"