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Most of the audience - singular or plural?

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thanhan.k43ftu
 Post subject: Most of the audience - singular or plural?
 Post Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 9:46 pm 
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Students


Posts: 6
I am working with sentence correction, and confuse with singular-plural matter.
In MGMAT guide for SC, it is written that collective nouns like audience are followed by singular verbs, and "Most of N" phrases are followed by plural verb.
So, which kind of verb will follow "Most of the audience"?
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varun_783
 Post subject: Re: Most of the audience - singular or plural?
 Post Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 4:12 pm 
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Course Students


Posts: 263
Hi,

That is an interesting question. There are two rules in question here.

1) Collective nouns are almost always singular.

2) "Most" falls into the category of the 5 indefinite pronouns that can be either singular or plural depending on the context. These 5 pronouns, referred to by the acronym SANAM, are:

S- Some
A - Any
N - None
A - All
M - More/Most

To determine whether its singular or plural, we have to check the noun object of the Of-prepositional phrase, which in this case is audience.

So, according to that rule, a singular verb must follow audience.

e.g.- Most of the audience has left.

It does sound a bit odd though. I am so used to saying that the audience have left. But that's also cause I spent the last 9 years in England. :)

Regards

Sunil
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jnelson0612
 Post subject: Re: Most of the audience - singular or plural?
 Post Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 1:36 pm 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


Posts: 1857
Wow, great explanation Sunil!

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Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor
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thanhan.k43ftu
 Post subject: Re: Most of the audience - singular or plural?
 Post Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 9:36 pm 
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Students


Posts: 6
So, according to the agreement between verb-pronoun we will say:
Most of the audience claps her/his hands?
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jnelson0612
 Post subject: Re: Most of the audience - singular or plural?
 Post Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 10:03 pm 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


Posts: 1857
thanhan.k43ftu wrote:
So, according to the agreement between verb-pronoun we will say:
Most of the audience claps her/his hands?


Correct.

_________________
Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor
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