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Difficulty: HardSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Fill in the blank with the grammatically correct verb form that satisfies the rules of subject-verb concord.

Answer:Neither the chief prosecutor nor the defense attorneys 【were】 satisfied with the ruling delivered at yesterday's court session.

Answer

The correct verb form to complete the sentence is 'were'.
In English grammatical concord, when two subjects are connected by 'neither... nor', the principle of proximity applies. The verb must agree with the subject closest to it. Here, the plural noun phrase 'the defense attorneys' immediately precedes the verb slot, and the phrase 'yesterday's court session' specifies a completed past action. Therefore, the past plural verb 'were' is grammatically required.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the structural rule governing the subject joined by correlative conjunctions.
The sentence uses the correlative conjunction 'Neither... nor', which joins two subjects: 'the chief prosecutor' (singular) and 'the defense attorneys' (plural).
When subjects are joined by 'neither... nor', the rule of proximity concord dictates that the verb must agree in number with the subject noun phrase closest to it.
2
Determine the nearest subject and its grammatical number.
The subject closest to the verb blank is 'the defense attorneys', which is plural.
Proximity concord requires matching the verb to 'defense attorneys' rather than 'chief prosecutor'.
3
Select the appropriate verb tense and form.
The temporal marker 'yesterday's court session' establishes that the action occurred in the past tense. The past tense plural form of the auxiliary verb 'be' is 'were'.
A plural subject ('defense attorneys') combined with a past tense context requires the past plural verb 'were'.

Key Concept

Proximity Concord with Correlative Conjunctions
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Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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