In my previous posting above, it looks like I myself was tripped by the inverted clause structure into making a wrong explanation for answer choice A as incorrect for the English-proficiency test below:
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
While writing about this particular test for my English-usage column in the The Manila Times, it dawned on me that I was wrong in saying 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 doesn’t agree with its singular-from antecedent noun phrase, “outsourcing jobs to a consulting firm in another country.” 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 still be a wrong answer for that test? Based on my clarification above, I don’t think so now. The inverted clause construction “overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction” is grammatically and semantically airtight and thus meets the grade as a correct answer. However, its use as a coordinate clause in that sentence does 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. I think it’s only for this reason that 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!
