求高人指点，白勇56题

王雅晨

各位NN，我想问下its profits是复数还是单数~~个人觉得应该是复数，不能用it指代，要用them，不知对否

onlykevin

the only one of those pronouns that's incorrect is the "it" in choice (c).
in that choice, the context of the pronoun clearly refers to the company's profits; however, “profits” is plural, while “it” is singular.

the problem in the other three choices involves verb tense; the verb “expected” is illogically in parallel with the verb "declined".
this situation is illogical because the parallelism doesn't make sense; we are talking about expectations that were in place prior to the decline in profits, and which ceased to be relevant upon that decline.
this situation -- a state that is ongoing only until another past event, and which is directly related to that past event -- is precisely the kind of situation that requires the past perfect tense, so the sentence should contain “had expected”, as in the first two choices.---- 来自Manhattan 大师Ron的权威解释···