A WORD, PLEASE:Making the subject and verb agree

Don’t read this column. I don’t mean to suggest that this column contains no useful information. It’s worse than that. This column accomplishes the scientifically improbable feat of offering good information that actually sucks knowledge right out of your head — a black hole of the brain certain to be the subject of an upcoming Stephen Hawking book, once I tell him about it.

I’m talking about the choice between “A box of eggs is on the table” and “A box of eggs are on the table.”

Given the choice, you’d pick the first option, right? Probably without a moment’s hesitation. And you’d be right.

The brain-draining question is: Why?

The issue at hand is subject-verb agreement — making sure that your verb is conjugated as singular for a singular subject, “he is,” or plural for a plural subject, “they are.” Most of the time we get this right without thinking about it, acting on instinct alone. We don’t stop mid-sentence when talking about a box of eggs to scratch our heads and ponder whether an “is” or an “are” should follow. We just sense that the true grammatical subject of our sentence is not “eggs” but “box,” and conjugate accordingly.

It’s when we stop and think about it — when we put those instincts under a microscope — that our happy status quo goes belly up and everything we thought we knew becomes stuff beyond our grasp.

You’ve been warned.

Still reading? OK. Then here’s my next question: Why, when talking about a box of eggs, do we conjugate for “box” and not “eggs”? That is, why do we think of “box” as the subject. After all, we’re more interested in eggs than the box, right?

The answer lies in the concept of the prepositional phrase. The word “of,” as you probably know, is a preposition. When you see it in uses such as “a box of eggs,” it’s forming a prepositional phrase, “of eggs.” And the job of a prepositional phrase in these cases is to modify another word. That is, it’s working as an adjective, and because adjectives describe something, it must be pointing to our true subject.

Take the term “a man of courage.” There are two nouns here. But we know that “man” and not “courage” will be the subject because “courage” is too busy doing the job of being an adjective — pointing to, and paying homage to, the lead word, “man.” This is very different from saying “the man’s courage,” in which the possessive “man’s” is clearly working as a modifier of the subject is “courage.” The “of” is key, because it tells us that the next word is part of a modifier that’s modifying something else.

Another example: “A compensation package with benefits.” Here “with” is our preposition. Therefore “with benefits” is our prepositional phrase. Therefore “package” and not “benefits” is the real subject of our sentence.

There’s a catch, of course. All this prepositional phrase business becomes less important when talking about “collectives” or “collective nouns” like “team,” “group,” “band,” “battalion,” etc. In those cases, it’s not so easy to know whether it’s “a team of cheerleaders is” or “a team of cheerleaders are.” In fact, according to Bryan Garner, author of “Garner’s Modern American Usage” and parts of the “Chicago Manual of Style,” questions of whether a collective like “team” gets a singular or plural verb are best left up to the writer. To make matters worse, other experts disagree, demanding that a collective like “team” is always singular.

But even in these cases, “of cheerleaders” is still a prepositional phrase modifying our subject, “team.” The only question is whether we should think of “team” as singular or plural.

Perhaps that question is best left unasked.