Excavations at the ancient Mayan site of Tikal have uncovered numerous artifacts from the Classic Period. The stone tablets describing...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

• Excavations at the ancient Mayan site of Tikal
  • have uncovered numerous artifacts
    • from the Classic Period.
• The stone tablets
  • describing the reign of various rulers
• [?] among the most significant discoveries,
  • providing historians with detailed chronological information.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading from the beginning:

The first sentence tells us:

• Excavations at Tikal (an ancient Mayan site)
  • have uncovered many artifacts from the Classic Period
  • This sets up the context - we're learning about archaeological discoveries

Now the second sentence begins:

• 'The stone tablets describing the reign of various rulers...'
  • So among all those artifacts, there are stone tablets
  • These tablets describe the reigns of various rulers

Here's where we need to fill in the blank:

• 'The stone tablets ______ among the most significant discoveries'

Let's look at our choices:

• We have: are, was, is, has been
• These are all different forms of the verb 'to be'
• The difference is whether they're singular or plural

What do we notice about the subject?

• The subject here is 'The stone tablets'
  • 'Tablets' is PLURAL - we're talking about multiple tablets
  • The phrase 'describing the reign of various rulers' is just giving us extra information about these tablets
  • But the core subject is still 'tablets' (plural)

So we need:

• A PLURAL verb to match 'tablets'
• Looking at our choices, only 'are' is plural
• The correct answer is A. are

The sentence continues:

• 'providing historians with detailed chronological information'
  • This tells us WHY these tablets are so significant
  • This tells us WHY these tablets are so significant
  • They give historians detailed information about when things happened

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Subject-Verb Agreement with Intervening Phrases

When a descriptive phrase comes between the subject and verb, you need to mentally skip over that phrase to find the true subject and make sure your verb agrees with it.

The pattern looks like this:

Subject + descriptive phrase + Verb
(These must agree in number)

Example 1:

• The books on the shelf are dusty.
• Subject: "books" (plural)
• Intervening phrase: "on the shelf"
• Verb: "are" (plural) ✓

Example 2:

• The student who won all the awards is graduating.
• Subject: "student" (singular)
• Intervening phrase: "who won all the awards"
• Verb: "is" (singular) ✓

In our question:

• Subject: "The stone tablets" (plural)
• Intervening phrase: "describing the reign of various rulers"
• Verb needed: "are" (plural) ✓

The key is to identify your subject first, then make sure your verb matches it in number, even if other words come between them.