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I have a sentence with a compound predicate, which I wish to modify with a relative clause. According to traditional American English grammar, should the verb in the relative clause be plural or singular?

Option 1, plural verb (this seems better to me):

The Public Works Department has made some adjustments to signage and painted a new temporary crosswalk, which have made it much easier to navigate around the construction zones.

Option 2, singular verb (grammar checkers seem universally to prefer this):

The Public Works Department has made some adjustments to signage and painted a new temporary crosswalk, which has made it much easier to navigate around the construction zones.

As a related note, in archaic style, one can repeat the relative clause complement internally, and in this case, the answer is obvious; the verb should be plural, to wit:

The Public Works Department has made some adjustments to signage and painted a new temporary crosswalk, which efforts have made it much easier to navigate around the construction zones.

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    Both pluralities are fine, and the choice doesn't materially affect the meaning - just the syntactic structure. The singular verb form refers back to the entire statement preceding the word which, whereas the plural form refers back to some adjustments.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 13:29
  • 1
    Both sound quite awkward, since any reader would assume that the antecedent is either "a new temporary crosswalk" or the entire preceding clause, not the coordination combined by "and."
    – alphabet
    Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 16:10
  • Yes, I prefer (2), but as alphabet says, the default meaning is << The Public Works Department has[ made some adjustments to signage, and has painted a new temporary crosswalk. This [work] has made it much easier to navigate around the construction zones. >> It doesn't matter much in this case (whether the relative clause refers to A + B together, or to the Public Works Department doing A + B), but attachment ambiguities should be avoided.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 16:58
  • I don't believe this belongs here, since I'm a native speaker, but I'm not going to flag it out of solidarity for the mod strike.
    – OpenAI was the last straw
    Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 17:05
  • In the "archaic" version, why couldn't one say ". . . which effort has made it . . ."?
    – MarcInManhattan
    Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 22:15

1 Answer 1

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All versions are correct. The first two are natural, while the third is awkward, or dated.

In the plural version, "have" agrees with the two things the PWD did.

In the singular version, "has" agrees treats the things the PWD did as a single act, which combined has that effect.

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