Question

Fill in the blanks with the correct present tense verb:
My dog Floyd, together with Buster the cat, ________ to play with money; the cat swats crumpled bills onto the floor where the dog shreds them to pieces.
(a)like
(b)liked
(c)likes
(d)None of the above

Answer 1

Hint: Read the given sentence and try to understand what it is trying to convey. Now go through the given options and choose the one that agrees with the subject and tense of the sentence. If you still doubt your answer then try speaking out the sentence and see which word fits in most appropriately.

Complete answer: A verb is a word which describes an action. It forms the main part of the predicate and has to be in accordance with the predicate
A verb mainly has 3 forms:
(i) Past
(ii) Present
(iii) Past participle
The sentence has one subject, therefore, the subject is singular. According to subject word agreement plural subject always goes with a plural verb and singular subject goes with a singular verb. This means the missing word has to be singular.
In this question, we have to use the present form of the verb. Now, let us analyze the given options:
(a)Like is the present form of the verb but it is plural and therefore used with a plural subject. Here we have a singular subject so this option is incorrect.
(b)Liked is clearly past tense and so we cannot use it here as the word has to be undoubtedly present.
(c)Likes is the present form of the verb and is singular as we require here. So this is the correct option.
(d)None of these cannot be the correct option because we have found a suitable word available among the given options.

Note: Here one phrase is used which is ‘together with Buster the cat’. This is called a prepositional phrase (a phrase containing preposition). A prepositional phrase should not contain a subject by the basic grammar rule, therefore, Buster the cat is not the subject of the sentence and so treated as a predicate.