Question

Find out the correct sentence among the following:

a) Ram and Sita plays chess.
b) Ram and Sita has played chess.
c) Ram and Sita was playing chess.
d) Ram and Sita are playing chess.

Answer 1

Hint: We have to check the subject-verb concord as well as the singular and plural forms. The sentence should sound right with the correct subject and verb.

Complete answer:

Every sentence in English has a subject, verb, and object. By following the subject-verb agreement rules, we create proper meaningful sentences in English.
In the given sentence, Ram and Sita are the subjects. ‘Plays’ is the verb and ‘chess’ is the object. As two nouns are given here, we understand that the subject is plural. A plural subject should always have a plural verb.
That being the case, we can rule out option a. In option a, the two subjects carry a singular verb – ‘plays’ - which cannot be accepted. Hence, option a is wrong.
In option b again, we have the singular verb ‘has’ for Ram and Sita and therefore it is incorrect.
Similarly, in option c, we have ‘was’ which is in fact the past tense of the singular auxiliary verb ‘is.’ Hence, option c is wrong.
Option d gives the right answer with the correct subject-verb concord. Having plural subjects, ‘are’ is used here to denote the present continuous form of the sentence.

Note: One must not use is, was, has, or does with plural subjects. These are singular in function.