Which of these sentences has an error in subject-verb agreement? A. Official procedures calls for students who are tardy three t
imes to serve detention. B. As a result of her efforts, a team of volunteers signs up every month to clean the city's parks. C. The committee of parents protested loudly at the school board meeting. D. Each of the neighbors brings a dish to share at the pot-luck gathering.
Sentence A has an error in subject-verb agreement. Subject-verb agreement refers to the fact that the subject and the verb in a sentence must agree in number. In other words, they both must be singular or they both must be plural. In the sentence above, the NP subject "official procedures" is plural, so the verb should also be plural, but it is singular "calls". The -s indicates that the verb is in the third person singular. Consequently, the subject and the verb do not agree in number, making the sentence ungrammatical (see 1).
1) *Official procedures calls for students who are tardy three times to serve detention
