Subject Verb Agreement - Implied Sentences question

[hqdo124]

Hello everyone,

I'm having trouble understanding this one concept.

Example: The girl eats watermelon.
Assuming that that sentence is correct 'girl' is singular and 'eats' is singular. That makes perfect sense to me.

Example: Let the girl eat watermelon.
From my ear, I think that 'eat' is the right verb in this case. I'm not sure how it relates to the rules though. 'Eat' is plural, where's the plural subject? If 'eat' isn't the action verb, then 'Let' is also plural. Where is the 'plural' subject?

Thanks,

HQ Do

[RonPurewal]

Example: Let the girl eat watermelon.

As written, this example is irrelevant to gmat sc, because it's written as a command (like "Go home!").

ALL gmat sc sentences are ALWAYS third-person declarative sentences.
i.e., they are never questions or commands, and they never involve the first person (I/me/we/us/my/mine/our/ours) or the second person (you/your/yours).

--

on the other hand, if you see "let" + noun + verb, that works a lot like this:
They allowed the prisoner to see his family on holidays.
"Let" works in much the same way, except in that "to" is dropped. (I don't really know why; it's idiomatic. It was probably there at some point in the history of the language.)
They let the prisoner see his family on holidays.
So, you can just think of this as "to see", with the "to" lopped off.

This use of "let" is somewhat informal, and is thus extremely unlikely to turn up in a GMAC problem (as opposed to "allow").

On the other hand, there are other, more formally acceptable verbs (e.g., "help") that work the same way.