YAMS!!! and how they are important to grammar.?

Question

How should I write this sentence:

One of the foods that supposedly helped Henrietta IS/ARE yams.

How can I fix this??? Is "yams" plural???

Answer 1

Try to avoid the passive tense.  Instead, re-write:

One of the foods that supposedly helped Henrietta is yam.  

The subject of the sentence is ONE.  Therefore, use yam (singular) and you avoid any problem with IS / ARE.

Answer 2

It can be helpful to simplify the sentence.  Try removing the prepositional phrase and the relative clause, and compare from there.

-- One is yams.

-- One are yams.

Well, there's your problem.  Your subject is the pronoun "one" -- that's obviously singular.  Your predicate compliment is "yams" -- that's obviously plural.  In this sentence, both "one" and "yams" have the same meaning, even though they don't have the same number.

The verb must agree with the subject.  It doesn't matter how many words come between the simple subject and the verb any more than it matters what happens to come after the verb.

If you must leave the sentence in its current structure, then it becomes: "One of the foods that supposedly helped Henrietta is yams."

There is another way to look at the problem.  In English, it's much easier to treat a plural word as singular than the other way around.  We have something that we call a collective noun.  This is something that's plural in nature, but singular in grammar.  For example, different groups of people can easily be called by a singular name:  a committee, an audience, a mob, a gang, a clique.  In your sentence, "yams" is acting like a collective noun.  It names a single, particular type of food, just as the word "audience" can name a single, particular type of group.  

Answer 3

"one of the foods that supposedly helped henrietta were yams."

Answer 4

The word yams is plural, but in this sentence, the subject is "One".  The correct verb would be "Is".

Answer 5

"Yam" is singular, "yams" is plural.  Or avoid the whole thing: Henrietta was supposedly helped by eating yams.