Question

Use morphology and syntax to make grammatical sense of the following sentence (Mark all that apply.).

The ova of all mammals except the monotremes undergo holoblastic segmentation.
How do you know the subject of the sentence is singular or plural?
It takes a plural verb.
It takes a singular verb.
It has a plural ending.

Answer 1

In the sentence:

The ova of all mammals except the monotremes undergo holoblastic segmentation.

The subject is plural: The ova of all mammals except the monotremes. It is a compound subject but the core of the subject is the ova.

The ova which is the plural for ovum in Latin, and since the core of the subject is in plural, the verb must take a plural form to respect the subject-verb agreement.

Subject-verb agreement happens in the simple present tense when the subject is a third person (a He, a She, or an It) and the verb is added an S, an ES, or IES to the ending of such verb, for example:

My Father works in a Bank. Subject + VerbS

In this case the verb is added an S because the subject “my father” is a “HE” and by having that done, there is a subject-verb agreement.

so, for all the information presented, we can conclude that we know that the is plural because:

It takes a plural verb.

The ova...undergo... plural subject + plural form verb.

Answer 2

The way you know the subject of the sentence is plural is because it takes a plural verb. You can see that the subject of the sentence is the ova (plural for of Latin word ovum, meaning egg cell), and the verb it takes is undergo (plural), and not undergoes, which would be singular.