Examkin

Question

Difficulty: HardSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Neither the chief accountant nor the internal auditors who inspected the ledger _______ aware that each of the flagged transactions _______ further investigation. Which pair of verbs correctly completes the sentence?

  1. were / requiresAnswer
  2. B
    was / require
  3. C
    were / require
  4. D
    was / requires

Answer

The pair 'were / requires' correctly completes the sentence.
The correct selection uses 'were' to agree with the adjacent plural noun phrase 'the internal auditors' following the 'neither... nor' proximity rule, and 'requires' to agree with the singular head pronoun 'each'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the first blank within the correlated conjunction structure ('Neither... nor...').
The subjects joined are 'the chief accountant' (singular) and 'the internal auditors' (plural). By the rule of proximity, the verb must agree with the nearer subject, 'the internal auditors'.
When subjects are connected by 'neither... nor', the verb agrees in number with the subject closest to it.
2
Identify the head subject of the subordinate clause for the second blank.
The head subject of the clause is the indefinite pronoun 'each', which is grammatically singular. The phrase 'of the flagged transactions' is a prepositional modifier.
Indefinite pronouns such as 'each', 'either', and 'neither' take singular verbs regardless of any intervening plural nouns.
3
Select the verb forms that satisfy both concord rules simultaneously.
The first blank requires the plural verb 'were', and the second blank requires the singular verb 'requires'.
Combining 'were' for proximity concord and 'requires' for indefinite pronoun concord yields the grammatically accurate sentence.

Key Concept

Subject-Verb Agreement involving Correlated Conjunctions (Proximity Concord) and Indefinite Pronouns
Estimated Time:1m 30s
Rate this question

Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

More questions from this topic