Locating the Verb of a Sentence

Yesterday I mentioned in my entry the importance of locating the verb of a sentence. Here is an example question Che-wei asked yesterday.

Most of the companies surveyed ________ their growth to marketing and sales strategies.

(A) attributes    (B) attributed   (C) attributing    (D) attribution

First, "surveyed" is not the verb because if it is the verb, it should be followed by its object since "survey" is a transitive verb. Suppose "their growth" is its object, then the blank and the phrase beginning with "to" after the phrase make no sense. In fact, "surveyed" here comes from "Wh-iz deletion": Most of the companies (which were) surveyed , used as an adjective to modify the noun before it. Now we know the blank should be where the verb is and the phrase "attribute A to B" makes sense. So we can delete (C) and (D) because they are not verbs. Since the subject "Most of the companies" is in the plural form, the choice "(A) attributes" is wrong. The answer is (B) attributed. Here "attributed" is a past tense verb.