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Daughters of the American Revolution

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jnelson0612
 Post subject: Re: Daughters of the American Revolution
 Post Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 10:55 am 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


Posts: 1857
njoshi023 wrote:
Hey guys,

So what threw me off here, with regards to plurality, was the fact that I assumed that the modifier " a volunteer service organization" was only modifying "American Revolution"

Here is an analogous statement

"The kids of North Valley High School, California's top ranked school, are very smart

Looking back I guess, I can sort of bring in the "meaning" aspect to the original question. "American Revolution" by itself cant be a volunteer service organization

Besides the meaning aspect though, was I wrong grammatically with my assumption in any ways?

Thanks


Here's the difference. "The Daughters of the American Revolution" is a particular organization and DAR is its name; thus, the prepositional phrase is part of the name. "The kids of North Valley High School" is not a particular named organization, and because of that the appositive, "California's top-ranked school", is referring back to "kids", the main noun. Does this make sense?

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Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor
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shaw.s.li
 Post subject: Re: Daughters of the American Revolution
 Post Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:57 am 
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Students


Posts: 25
Just to make it clear, you can't write

"The kids of North Valley High School, California's top ranked school, are very smart."

As the instructor pointed out, California's top ranked school is modifying the subject, which in this case is "the kids."
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njoshi023
 Post subject: Re: Daughters of the American Revolution
 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2011 12:18 am 
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Students


Posts: 3
Oh hmm interesting. That makes sense although I would have put my money on my high school example being grammatically correct.

Thanks guys
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njoshi023
 Post subject: Re: Daughters of the American Revolution
 Post Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2011 12:20 am 
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Students


Posts: 3
So what would be the grammatically correct version of this sentence then (with minimal changes I suppose)

"The kids of North Valley High School, California's top ranked school, are very smart"

Thanks again!
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tim
 Post subject: Re: Daughters of the American Revolution
 Post Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 10:29 pm 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


Posts: 2206
Location: Southwest Airlines, seat 21C
The appositive is referring to the school itself. The sentence is grammatically correct. As Jamie said, this is because “kids” is the subject, not some organization called “Kids of North Valley High School”. If there were such an organization (in which “kids” would be capitalized), the correct verb would be “is”. This is what is happening in the original..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor
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