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Question

Difficulty: MediumSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Complete the sentence below by filling in the blank with the grammatically correct verb form that satisfies the rules of concord.

Answer:Either the chief registrar or the court clerks 【are】 responsible for archiving the missing judicial files.

Answer

are (or were)
In standard English grammar, when subjects of different grammatical numbers are connected by 'either... or' or 'neither... nor', the verb must agree in number with the subject closest to it. Because the plural noun phrase 'the court clerks' immediately precedes the verb position, a plural verb ('are' or 'were') is grammatically correct.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the syntactic structure of the sentence.
The subject consists of two noun phrases joined by the correlative conjunctions 'Either... or': 'the chief registrar' (singular) and 'the court clerks' (plural).
Correlative conjunctions require applying the rule of proximity concord.
2
Apply proximity concord to select the appropriate verb form.
The noun phrase closest to the blank is 'the court clerks', which is plural.
Under proximity concord, the verb must agree in number with the noun phrase nearest to it, requiring a plural verb ('are' or 'were').

Key Concept

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

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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