Ged Pre Test
Q: i'm going to be taking the GED test towards the end of this month.
I'll probably be coming here to ask questions every once in a while. I
have a few questions.
I was reading a sentence today that someone posted in another group and
I was confused. Here's the sentence:
There (is, are) a lot of things about the game that scare me.
Would the correct word to use in that sentence be "There is" or would it
be correct with "There are"? The reason why i'm confused is because i'm
assuming the subject is the word "lot". I assume the subject is the word
"lot" because my GED book says that subjects are sometimes interrupted
by prepositional phrases such as "of, in, for, to, from, with, on". Look
at this sentence:
The bushel of peaches (has, have) been sold.
The word "bushel" is the subject. Peaches is not the subject because it
is the interrupting phrase which is set up by the word "of". The bushel
of peaches HAS been sold is correct because "bushel" is singular and
"has" agrees with it. If you cross out the words "of peaches" and wrote
the sentence like this, "The bushel has been sold" clearly this way
makes sense. "The bushel have been sold" clearly doesn't make sense.
In the first sentence I mentioned, there is the word "of": There (is,
are) a lot of things about the game that scare me. Is the word "of" an
interrupting phrase in this sentence which makes the word "lot" the
subject? The verb "is" would agree if the subject is "lot". However, if
the subject is the word "things", then "There are a lot of things about
this game that scare me" would be correct because "There are things"
agrees with each other. "Are" is plural which refers to a plural subject
"things". "Is" is singular which refers to a singular subject "lot". The
book says that when a subject is plural, you can never have a verb which
ends with an s (therefore no "is" for "things"). The confusion here is
because the book says "of" is an interrupting phrase.
These are my questions:
1- Is "lot" the subject?
2- Is "things" the subject?
3- Is the word "of" an interrupting phrase in that sentence?
3- What kind of word is lot? Noun? adjective?
4- Can an adjective be the subject of a verb?
5- Can something other than a noun or pronoun be the subject of the
sentence?
6- Which is correct, "There are, or There is"?
I also have a side question. If you notice, sometimes I wrote: In the
sentence, "There (are, is) a lot of..." Do you always have to capitalize
the first word in a quote when you quote something? For example look at
this: Mary baked a cake, and she thought, "Wow, what a great cake" while
she said "Very nice cake". Is "Wow" capitalized? Is "Very capitalized?
A:Relax! You'll do fine on the GED. That test is essentially only at 6th or
7th grade level competency anyway. You seem to have far in excess of the
minimum intelligence/education needed to pass.
As to "a lot": It's a two-word adjective or adverb, depending upon the
context. The same holds whether to use the singular or the plural. The
context governs. So you will have to consider it in context. See below:
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/muchfew.html#alot
A lot
The words a lot must be written as two words. The phrase has the same
meaning as both many and much and can be interchanged with either one.
A lot is followed