The English Oracle

"Years of experience that keeps us safe." vs "Years of experience that keep us safe."

--------------------------------------------------
Hire the world's top talent on demand or became one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
and get $2,000 discount on your first invoice
--------------------------------------------------

Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Quirky Dreamscape Looping

--

Chapters
00:00 &Quot;Years Of Experience That Keeps Us Safe.&Quot; Vs &Quot;Years Of Experience That Keep Us Safe.&
01:09 Accepted Answer Score 6
01:48 Thank you

--

Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...

--

Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

--

Tags
#grammaticalnumber #verbagreement #relativeclauses #subjects

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 6


I don't think you can categorically identify either version as "incorrect".

As OP says, superficially "We've got years of experience that keep us safe" seems correct, since the subject of the verb keep is the plural noun phrase years of experience.

But I personally have no problem parsing it as experience that keeps us safe. The fact that this experience is qualified by years of seems to me no different to if it had been qualified by plenty of, or a great deal of. It's the singular experience, not the plural years, that helps.

In short, both seem "defensible" to me, but I find the singular verb form flows better.