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"Bartenders" and "are" are what I believe to be the subject-verb agreement in both sentences. Is this correct?

The reason I was ask is because at first I thought the subject was "cognac".

The original question on the exam was how to improve a similar sentence, and the answer was "both A and B" (the two sentences in bold below)

I know in the second sentence "cognac" doesn't take a verb, but in the first sentence it does. However I know both sentences have to be grammatically correct, which brings me back to my gut feeling where "bartenders" and "are" = Subject-Verb agreement.

Can someone please confirm. 1. "Bartenders are starting to turn to the timeless and elegant cognac more and more often." 2. "It is such a timeless and eloquent spirt that bartenders are turning to it more often."

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  • Is it possible that one of the sentences might have more than one subject and more than one verb?
    – Ed Grimm
    Jan 23, 2019 at 4:32
  • Is that the case with sentence 1?
    – Ian Simons
    Jan 23, 2019 at 4:57
  • Doesn't it have to have two independent clauses to be a compound sentence? What if someone asked me to find the subject and predicate of sentence1?
    – Ian Simons
    Jan 23, 2019 at 5:11
  • I'm confused because sentence 1 is just as much about "bartenders" as it is "cognac".
    – Ian Simons
    Jan 23, 2019 at 5:14
  • You can also make a compound sentence with one independent clause and one dependent clause. I found the following link by googling "how to join two independent clauses" butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/grammar/indep_clause.html
    – Ed Grimm
    Jan 23, 2019 at 5:17

2 Answers 2

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"Bartenders are starting to turn to the timeless and elegant cognac more and more often."

This sentence has only one finite verb: the auxiliary "are". It is used along with the participle "starting" to form the "present progressive", and the participle takes as its complement an infinitive clause introduced by "to turn". Altogether, this forms a predicate "are starting to turn to the timeless and elegant cognac more and more often".

The subject is the noun phrase "bartenders". The noun phrase "the timeless and elegant cognac" is the object of the preposition to. "Cognac" is not a subject of any kind in this sentence.

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In the second sentence, the subject-vb-predicate is "It is a spirit." "such... that" introduces an adjectival clause, the subject of which is "bartenders are"

Here is a helpful website on diagramming sentences:

https://www.english-grammar-revolution.com/diagramming-sentences.html

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