<p>Furthermore, highway maintenance costs and [pollution decreases] in areas planted with native flowers in areas planted with native flowers and grasses... blah blah not relevant</p>
<p>A)No change
B)pollution decrease
C)pollution has decreased
D)also decreasing pollution</p>
<p>B is the correct answer and this is what i picked but I'm not sure how to determine whether the verb(decreases) should be turned into decrease or decreases. What do you do when you have two nouns(costs and pollution) that the verb is referring too? Does it matter if one verb is singular and one is plural? or if both are singular or both are plural?</p>
<ol>
<li>Similarly, Pei’s design for the center in Dallas, Texas, echoes the aim of city [planners who] wished to revitalize the art district while announcing Dallas’s emergence as an international cultural center.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>The answer was no change for this one, the problem was not this one but a similar question on the test. I know the simple ask yourself the sentence in a question form and if you answer it with a he use who and if you use a him use whom. I know that who is the subject pronoun and whom is the object pronoun. Over here since it is referring to a group of people(planners) I’m not sure whether to use they(subject pronoun) or them(object pronoun) which messed me up. So I just asked myself, who is doing the wishing? The planners are! So it must be a subject pronoun so it is who! I tried to employ this technique in the following question and it didn’t work for that one but it did for this.</p>
<ol>
<li>George believed that while the renting of property produced an increase in land values and benefited property owners; higher land values were placed on the working class, [who] were asked to pay more rent. </li>
</ol>
<p>The right answer was who but I picked whom. I don’t understand. I asked myself who is being asked to pay more rent? The working class is. So, doesn’t that make them the object pronoun meaning they should be referred to with whom?</p>
<p><strong>I am no means an expert. Take all advice with a grain of salt</strong></p>
<p>For the first one, [highway maintenance costs] is a noun. The two phrases should match types, and [pollution decrease] as a phrase is a noun. In [pollution decreases], pollution is a noun and decreases is a verb which is what pollution is doing. Since the phrase in question must match the first phrase in type, [pollution decrease] is the correct choice. </p>
<p>At least, that’s my view. </p>
<p>For the second part of the second one, [the working class] are being acted upon [asked] so they are the the object, and therefore are referred to with [whom]. </p>
<p>Thanks for trying but I’m going to have to disagree with you on the first explanation. Pollution decrease could be a noun phrase in some cases but not here. the verb decreases is talking about both the highway maintenance costs and the pollution. Still need help on this one.</p>
<p>And yes I am agreeing with you on the second one! But the ACT apparently does not with us lol. They say who is the right answer. I don’t understand. </p>
<p>‘Who’ is correct. The verb in the clause is in the passive voice. Compare ‘they were asked’ to '<em>them</em> were asked. An example of a clause that would require ‘whom’ would be ‘whom the landowners were asking to pay more rent’. The verb in this example is in the active voice with ‘the landowners’ acting as subject.</p>
<p>OH wow that makes a lot of sense Irishdoctor, thanks. I can’t believe I didn’t realize that. But isn’t the working class still the object in the sentence? I don’t understand the whole passive vs. active verb thing</p>
<p>In the first example ‘decrease’ must be a verb with a compound subject, ‘highway costs and pollution’, and therefore must be plural, i.e., ‘decrease’. A good editor would have reversed the order to avoid confusion.</p>
<p>In the passive voice the subject, although being acted upon, is in the nominative case. The form is determined by the grammatical function, e.g. noun element controlling the verb element, as opposed to its logical role. In the example using the active voice ‘whom’ is grammatically in the objective case.</p>
<p>A simple rule of thumb might be as follows:</p>
<p>Active voice: the subject is the ‘actor’
Passive voice: the subject is acted upon (Sometimes the ‘actor’ will be identified in a prepositional phrase ‘by …’. For example, ‘The working class were being asked to pay more rent by the landlords’.</p>
<p>Compound subjects joined by ‘and’ are plural.</p>
<p>Be careful with phrases that appear to be compound subjects:</p>
<p>‘The landlord, along with his workers, has made improvements to the property’.</p>
<p>A simple rule of thumb might be as follows:</p>
<p>Active voice: the subject is the ‘actor’
Passive voice: the subject is acted upon (Sometimes the ‘actor’ will be identified in a prepositional phrase: ‘by …’. For example, ‘The working class were being asked to pay more rent by the landlords’.</p>
<p>Compound subjects joined by ‘and’ are plural.</p>
<p>Be careful with phrases that appear to be compound subjects:</p>
<p>‘The landlord, along with his workers, has made improvements to the property’.</p>