Identify the subject and verb in the following sentence: 'The team of explorers has discovered a new valley.'

• A. Subject: The team; verb: has discovered.
• B. Subject: Explorers; verb: has discovered.
• C. Subject: The team of explorers; verb: has discovered.
• D. Subject: The team of explorers; verb: discovered.

Answer: (C)

The subject is the entire noun phrase The team of explorers, and the verb is the verb phrase has discovered. The head noun in that subject is team, which is singular, so the sentence uses the singular auxiliary has with the past participle discovered to form the present-perfect tense. The phrase of explorers just adds detail about the team and doesn’t change the number of the subject. This pairing shows that the team performed the discovering at some time before now. If you treated only The team as the subject or only Explorers, or used discovered without has, the subject–verb pairing wouldn’t match the sentence’s structure or tense.