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Question

Difficulty: HardPronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

Read the sentence below carefully. Which pronoun accurately maintains grammatical agreement with its antecedent to fill the blank?

Answer:The panel of independent auditors, alongside the forensic investigators, completed 【its】 report on the financial discrepancy before the regulatory deadline.

Answer

The correct pronoun to complete the sentence is 'its'.
The head noun of the subject is the singular collective noun 'panel', which acts as a unified entity in submitting a single report. Prepositional phrases introduced by 'alongside' are syntactically parenthetical and do not pluralize the subject. Therefore, the singular possessive pronoun 'its' correctly maintains agreement with 'panel'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the primary antecedent in the sentence structure.
The grammatical subject and antecedent is the singular collective noun 'panel'.
Intervening phrases introduced by quasi-conjunctions or prepositions such as 'alongside the forensic investigators' do not alter the number of the head noun.
2
Select the pronoun that matches the grammatical number and gender of the antecedent.
Since 'panel' functions as a single unified body, it requires the singular neuter possessive pronoun 'its'.
Attracting the pronoun to the nearer plural noun 'investigators' creates a proximity error.

Key Concept

Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement with Collective Nouns and Intervening Phrases
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Topics

Pronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

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