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Grammar-7

britdam007

britdam007

India

35% of the population of England believes/ believe that the Iraq invasion of the US was unjustified.



Best regards,


Abhishek

07:02 AM Dec 10 2015 |

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Teacher AmySuper Member!

United States

Hi,



In this case, I would suggest: Thirty-five percent of the population of England believes that the Iraq invasion of the US was unjustified. 



When the subject of your sentence is a percentage followed by a preposition, the verb will agree with the object of the preposition. In other words, in your example, you want to match your verb to the word “population,” which is a singular noun. 



I hope this helps!



Best, 



Amy 

07:22 PM Dec 10 2015 |

britdam007

britdam007

India

Thank you! According to you in the above example the word ‘population’ is the object of the preposition ‘of’ and it is preceded by the subject (35%). Then what would you call “England’ here? Is that a complement by any chance? As far as I know a sentence can be divided into 4 parts; namely S+V+O+C. Please correct me if I’m wrong?



Best regards,


Abhishek

08:03 AM Dec 11 2015 |

Teacher AmySuper Member!

United States

Hi,



“Thirty-five percent of the population of England believes that the Iraq invasion of the US was unjustified.”



In your example, “Thirty-five percent of the population of England” is the complete subject of the sentence. “Thirty-five percent” is the dominate part of this subject, and it is modified by a preposition phrase (“of the population”), which itself is modified by another preposition phrase (“of England”). 



These preposition phrases are not grammatical compliments. Technically, an object complement occurs after a verb to help explain the direct object. For example:



“My mom called me wonderful.”



My mom = subject


called = verb


me = direct object


wonderful = object complement



Best,



Amy 



03:52 PM Dec 12 2015 |