During the restoration of a Renaissance chapel in Tuscany, conservators reassembled a relief whose pieces had been scattered among several storerooms. Each of the relief's more than eighty glazed terracotta sections, including several fragments that conservators initially believed _____ scanned before being fitted into the reconstructed whole.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
For agreement questions containing several clauses, identify the subject governed by each verb separately. Ignore intervening prepositional and parenthetical phrases, trace relative pronouns to their antecedents, and then verify that every verb agrees with its own subject rather than with the nearest noun.
Hints
Separate the clauses
Identify the subject of the verb inside the clause beginning with “that,” and then identify the subject of the sentence's main verb.
Trace the relative pronoun
Determine which earlier noun the relative pronoun “that” represents. The embedded verb must agree with that noun.
Find the head of the main subject
Ignore the intervening prepositional phrase and parenthetical phrase when determining whether the main subject is singular or plural.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify the embedded subject
Within the phrase “several fragments that conservators initially believed _____,” the relative pronoun “that” refers to the plural noun “fragments.” The embedded verb must therefore be plural: “were parts of another work.”
Identify the main subject
The main subject is “Each,” not the nearby plural nouns “sections” or “fragments.” Because “Each” is singular, it requires the singular main verb “was scanned.”
Complete both agreement relationships
Using the plural verb in the embedded clause and the singular verb in the main clause produces: “Each of the relief's more than eighty glazed terracotta sections, including several fragments that conservators initially believed were parts of another work, was scanned before being fitted into the reconstructed whole.”