grammar question

[C-Money]

I have the following phrase in the concluding paragraph of my statement of purpose:

"I believe that my educational and professional grounding in history and law have provided me with the skills, knowledge and intellectual focus to succeed in advanced graduate study..."

Should I change the word HAVE to HAS? Technically, grounding is singular, but I'm trying to impart the idea that my educational grounding (in history) and my professional grounding (in law) are distinct. What reads better? Does it matter?

[alexis]

Hmm good question. This is just my take: I think technically it should be "has," since grounding is singular. The sentence implies that educational & professional grounding in history and educational & professional grounding in law have provided you with the skills, not separately...I think if you wanted to make them distinct, you would need to reword it as something like "my educational grounding in history and professional experiences in law have provided me with the skills..." if you wanted to impart them as 2 separate things.

[LateAntique]

+1 - 'has' agrees with its noun in number. I'd use the word 'background' instead of 'grounding'.

[cosmike10]

I have the following phrase in the concluding paragraph of my statement of purpose:

"I believe that my educational and professional grounding in history and law have provided me with the skills, knowledge and intellectual focus to succeed in advanced graduate study..."

Should I change the word HAVE to HAS? Technically, grounding is singular, but I'm trying to impart the idea that my educational grounding (in history) and my professional grounding (in law) are distinct. What reads better? Does it matter?

this is a common semantic ambiguity in linguistics. are you referring to educational grounding AND professional grounding (two groundings), or your the grounding you got from your education and profession. both 'have' and 'has' are correct, but change the sentence's overall meaning. i agree with the poster that said you should change the word 'grounding.'

Edited December 16, 2009 by cosmike10

[C-Money]

this is a common semantic ambiguity in linguistics. are you referring to educational grounding AND professional grounding (two groundings), or your the grounding you got from your education and profession. both 'have' and 'has' are correct, but change the sentence's overall meaning. i agree with the poster that said you should change the word 'grounding.'

Thanks, I already submitted most of my applications with the HAVE construction, but that's actually the meaning that I intended. I use the word grounding because I use background elsewhere in the essay and was just going for word variation.

[swisnieski]

this is a common semantic ambiguity in linguistics. are you referring to educational grounding AND professional grounding (two groundings), or your the grounding you got from your education and profession. both 'have' and 'has' are correct, but change the sentence's overall meaning. i agree with the poster that said you should change the word 'grounding.'

Poster above knows his/her grammar!