John's brother as well as I (a) / am guilty (b) of cheating Jason.(c)
This is an error spotting question asked in my exam, a friend told me that part B is wrong, he suggested to replace am with is , I agree that the helping Verb should agree with the subject preceding as well as but I suspect that that part A is wrong . The mistake is placement of first person pronoun. We usually follow rule of 2 3 1 ( 2 = second person 3 = third person 1 = first person ) in normal sentence but in sentences where the essence of sentence is somewhat negative such as we are talking responsibility for some wrong doing for something like that the rule becomes 1 2 3 .So going by this knowledge which I have the correct sentence should be I as well as John's brother am guilty of cheating Jason. Am I correct ?
Best Answer
Two natural ways to phrase the sentence would be:
It is not idiomatic English to say the following:
The "... and so am I" construction I gave in the top example is a good way to keep a sentence simple when the subjects are complex. For example:
Incidentally, the same construction can also make it clear whether people should be considered as a group or as individuals:
With that in mind, one of the two versions above might be more appropriate, depending on the context: "John's brother and I are guilty" suggests that we may have collaborated with each other, while "John's brother is guilty, and so am I" suggests that we each cheated Jason individually.