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Is this sentence correct

'To these internal rivals were added the threat to his position from the ever-growing commercial activity of the English company'.

If it's correct then what is the word order.

1 Answer 1

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It's almost grammatical . The verb should be was, not were, because its subject is the singular noun threat.

If you change the word order to put the subject first, it would be

The threat to his position from the ever-growing commercial activity of the English company was added to these internal rivals.

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  • 'to these internal rivals' is a prepositional phrase and I have heard that it can be put at the start or at the end of the sentence. The sentence construction should have been 'Prepositional phrase+ Subject + verb group' or the normal construction 'S + Verb group+ prep. Phrase'. Why it is 'Prep. Phrase+ verb group+ S'? My larger question is How word order is changed.
    – RADS
    May 29, 2021 at 0:56
  • I assume the author wanted to establish continuity with a description of "these...rivals" that preceded the quoted sentence, adding the new information about the external threat at the end. The sentence works with the word order as it is, except that the author or an editor got confused about the verb number by the proximity of the plural "rivals". May 29, 2021 at 4:36

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