Examkin

Question

Difficulty: HardSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Which of the following options correctly completes the sentence below?

'Neither the project manager nor the site engineers ________ aware that each of the new infrastructural policies ________ currently being reviewed by the board.'

  1. are / isAnswer
  2. B
    is / is
  3. C
    are / are
  4. D
    is / are

Answer

are / is
The option 'are / is' is correct because the first blank requires the plural verb 'are' to agree with the nearest subject ('site engineers') under the principle of proximity concord in correlative structures ('neither... nor'). The second blank requires the singular verb 'is' because the head subject of the subordinate clause is the singular indefinite pronoun 'each', which is not altered by the intervening plural prepositional phrase 'of the new infrastructural policies'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the first clause containing correlated subjects connected by 'neither... nor'.
Apply the rule of proximity concord, which mandates that the verb must agree in number with the subject nearest to it ('site engineers').
Since 'site engineers' is plural, the required verb for the first blank is 'are'.
2
Analyze the subordinate clause starting with 'that each of the new infrastructural policies...'.
Identify the head subject as the indefinite pronoun 'each' rather than the plural noun 'policies' inside the prepositional phrase.
The indefinite pronoun 'each' is grammatically singular and takes a singular verb, making 'is' the correct verb for the second blank.
3
Combine the results from both clause analyses.
The correct pair of verbs is 'are / is'.
This combination satisfies both proximity concord and indefinite pronoun concord rules simultaneously.

Key Concept

Subject-Verb Concord with Correlated Subjects and Indefinite Pronouns
Rate this question

Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

More questions from this topic