Question from computer chair (June 20, 2010):
In a test I took, the following question was given:
In each of the following sentences, part of the sentence or the entire sentence is underlined. Beneath each sentence you will find five ways of phrasing the underlined part. Choose the best answer.
“Outsourcing jobs to a consulting firm in another country is more cost-effective than paying employees locally, but overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction.”
(A) overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction
(B) it has overwhelmingly negative customer satisfaction effects
(C) in its customer satisfaction effects it is overwhelmingly negative
(D) there are the overwhelmingly negative effects in customer satisfaction
(E) its effects on customer satisfaction are overwhelmingly negative
*I was able to narrow down the answer choices to either B or E
The answer is E and the explanation was the following: The subject and action are in the wrong order in this sentence [using the clause in answer choice A]. (E) corrects the unnecessary reversal. (B) does nothing to solve the problem. (C) creates the awkward phrase “customer satisfaction effects.” (D) unnecessarily introduces the phrase “there are the,” and uses “in” where “on” is correct.
Please help me solve this confusion. Thank you.
My reply to computer chair:
The bad syntax and very clumsy phrasing of answer choices B, C, and D make them obviously incorrect. The choices can thus be quickly narrowed down to A and E.
The inverted clause in answer choice A is a possibly correct answer, for an inverted clause is actually a legitimate clause construction that positions the predicate ahead of the subject. At first blush, however, it looks like there’s a subject-verb disagreement error in A. In fact, I myself was initially tripped into thinking that the inverted clause “overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction” is rendered incorrect by the plural form of its operative verb “are,” which evidently doesn’t agree with its singular-from antecedent noun phrase, “outsourcing jobs to a consulting firm in another country.” On closer scrutiny, however, we will find that there is, in fact, no subject-verb disagreement in that inverted clause, for its operative subject is actually the plural noun “effects” and not the singular form antecedent of the possessive pronoun “its,” which, of course, is the noun phrase “outsourcing jobs to a consulting firm in another country.”
As I point out in Chapter 71 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, one of the clear and present dangers when we construct inverted sentences is the higher probability of our verbs failing to agree in number with the subjects of our inverts. I therefore gave the following advice about inverted sentences (an advice that I myself obviously overlooked in this case):
“So always remember this rule: the number of the subject must follow that of the verb, not that of the noun or pronoun that intervenes or comes before it. Take, for instance, this somewhat poetic invert: ‘To the dark recesses of public office go the scoundrels for their last refuge.’
“At first glance it would seem that the plural verb form ‘go’ should be the singular ‘goes’ instead so it can agree with the singular ‘public office.’ A closer look, however, shows that the true subject of the invert is not ‘public office’ (nor even ‘dark recesses’) but the plural ‘scoundrels.’
“The price of using inversion, it turns out, is eternal vigilance in our grammar.”
So now, if this is the case, would answer choice A be a wrong answer for that test? I don’t think so. The inverted clause construction “overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction” turns out to be grammatically and semantically airtight and thus meets the grade as a correct answer. However, its use as a coordinate clause in that sentence may seem unnatural, disruptive, and discordant; to the English learner, in fact, it wouldn’t look and sound in sync with the scheme of things in that sentence. (This is probably what was meant by the cryptic explanation given to computer chair that answer choice E “corrects the unnecessary reversal,” but that reversal actually isn’t grammatically wrong but is only stylistically different). I think it’s only because of this stylistic discordance that although grammatically correct, answer choice A is beaten by E—“its effects on customer satisfaction are overwhelmingly negative”—as the best answer for that test. I would wish, though, that the makers of standard English-proficiency tests would avoid crafting tests that allow for such ambiguity in the answer choices. It’s so tricky and cruel to foist them on both native and nonnative speakers of English!
