Maybe part of is functioning like a determiner, like bunch of or crew of:
Quote:
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon - Robert Service, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew"

Quote:
A crew of Pyrates are driven - Jonathan Swift, "Gulliver's Travels"


This is discussed by MWDEU under agreement, subject-verb; a bunch of the boys.

My native speaker intuition tells me that the sentence with the singular verb is wrong. That might not mean much, after all my dialect is not the same as Standard English. But based on the MDWEU entry, I think my dialect and Standard English line up on this point. So I'm changing my mind. This isn't the principle of proximity at work. The Standard English sentence is the one with the plural verb.

Last edited by goofy; 10/21/11 09:33 PM.