I think even with a single plural number in front of it, the construction would be singular. "His thesis was a seven sentence construction." All this starts with "a". We simply think of it as a single entity (construction) made up of more than one sentence. "There are seven sentences in his seven sentence construction." 
    I'm reading so much cognitive stuff that's it's hard for me not to fall into that language. We can conceive of the thesis as a single entity even when it has more than one part.  The language harmonizes with that. 

Craig

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Lavitt
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2011 1:59 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: plural or not?

Should be singular because it is a hyphenated adjective (one- or two-sentence) modifying the now condensation.

Scott Lavitt

--- On Sun, 11/13/11, Jan Kammert <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Jan Kammert <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: plural or not?
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Sunday, November 13, 2011, 10:39 AM Is the sentence
> 
>                
>               A thesis
> statement is a one or two sentence condensation of an argument.
> grammatically correct?
> 
> If so, why is the word sentence singular?  If the word should be 
> sentences (with an s), why?
> 
> Thanks!
> Jan
> 
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