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Question

Difficulty: EasySubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Fill in the blank to maintain proper grammatical concord. What is the correct verb form needed to complete the sentence?

Answer:Neither the manager nor the accounts officers 【were】 present at the emergency meeting yesterday.

Answer

were
The correct verb form is 'were'. When two subjects are connected by 'neither... nor', the principle of proximity concord dictates that the verb must agree with the subject closest to it. Here, 'the accounts officers' is plural and closest to the blank. Additionally, the temporal adverb 'yesterday' specifies past context, making 'were' the grammatically correct choice.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the subjects connected by the correlated conjunction 'neither... nor'.
The subjects are 'the manager' (singular) and 'the accounts officers' (plural).
In sentence structures using 'neither... nor', the rule of proximity concord applies.
2
Determine which subject is closest to the verb blank and select the appropriate tense.
'the accounts officers' is plural and is immediately adjacent to the blank, and the time marker 'yesterday' indicates the past tense.
According to proximity concord, the verb must agree in number with the nearer subject ('the accounts officers'), requiring the plural past tense verb 'were'.

Key Concept

Proximity Concord with Correlated Conjunctions
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Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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