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Question

Difficulty: HardPronoun-Antecedent Agreement

Which pronoun correctly completes the sentence below while maintaining proper pronoun-antecedent agreement?

Answer:Neither the municipal libraries nor the local museum could verify that 【its】 archival collection contained the rare 18th-century map of the county.

Answer

its
The correct pronoun is 'its' because it is a singular possessive pronoun that agrees with the closer singular antecedent, 'the local museum', following the proximity rule for correlative conjunctions.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the antecedent of the pronoun.
The subject contains a compound antecedent joined by the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor': 'the municipal libraries' (plural) and 'the local museum' (singular).
Finding the antecedent helps determine the correct agreement.
2
Apply the rule of proximity.
When subjects are joined by 'neither... nor', the pronoun agrees with the closer antecedent. Here, the closer antecedent is the singular noun 'the local museum'.
The proximity rule determines pronoun number for compound subjects joined by 'neither... nor'.
3
Determine the correct pronoun form.
The singular possessive pronoun for the inanimate antecedent 'museum' is 'its'.
A possessive pronoun is required to show ownership of the 'archival collection'.

Key Concept

Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement with Correlative Conjunctions
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Topics

Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

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