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Question

Difficulty: MediumSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Which verb form correctly completes the sentence below according to the rules of subject-verb concord?

Answer:Neither the lead researcher nor the laboratory assistants 【were】 aware of the security breach that occurred last night.

Answer

The correct verb form to fill the blank is 'were'.
According to the principle of proximity concord, when two subjects are connected by correlative conjunctions such as 'neither... nor', the verb must agree in number with the subject closer to it. Here, the noun phrase closest to the blank is the plural noun 'laboratory assistants', which requires the plural past-tense auxiliary verb 'were' to match the time frame 'last night'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the syntactic structure connecting the subjects.
The compound subject is connected by the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor' joining 'the lead researcher' (singular) and 'the laboratory assistants' (plural).
Correlative conjunctions require applying the rule of proximity concord.
2
Apply the rule of proximity concord to select the proper verb agreement and tense.
The verb must agree with the nearer subject ('laboratory assistants', plural) in the past tense ('last night'), yielding 'were'.
In 'neither... nor' constructions, the verb agrees with the subject noun phrase immediately adjacent to the verb position.

Key Concept

Proximity Concord with Correlative Conjunctions
Estimated Time:1m 0s
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Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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