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The corporate powers that be had decided last minute that I couldn't interview two key figures or use their information due to confidentiality issues and pre-IPO precautions.

This writer of the sentence above is working on an academic paper under extreme time pressures.

I am facing difficulty in determing which is the verb and subject of the main clause. Please provide a grammatical and semantic explanation.

user48754
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1 Answers1

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Here the main clause is your entire sentence

The corporate powers that be had decided last minute that I couldn't interview two key figures or use their information due to confidentiality issues and pre-IPO precautions.

It's clear that the subject of the sentence is The corporate powers that be and its verb is had decided.

On a separate note, the corporate powers that be uses the subjunctive (in case this is what's confusing you. )

I would further suggest you'd better slightly modify your sentence as:

The corporate powers that be had decided at the last minute that I couldn't interview two key figures or use their information due to confidentiality issues and pre-IPO precautions.

user405662
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    Thank you for the clear explanation. Now, I have totally comprehended the sentence structure--it turned out the problem was the phrase "the powers that be." Regarding the suggestion, I had assumed "last minute" was shorthand for that idiomatic phrase as well. The writer of the sentence in question is American--but not a professional writer, so may occasionally use words sloppily. Can you provide a bit more of explanation on this? – user48754 Jan 19 '21 at 10:01
  • @user48754: Well, I guess I'll have to retract my words. I mean it's okay to omit the preposition sometimes and here too it's a matter of style whether you wish to keep or omit at. The sentence reads just as fine in both cases. – user405662 Jan 19 '21 at 10:08
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    Thank you. I now understand everything. – user48754 Jan 19 '21 at 10:35