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Difficulty: MediumPronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

Complete the sentence below by supplying the correct pronoun that maintains proper pronoun-antecedent agreement in standard formal English.

Answer:Neither the principal investigator nor the environmental technicians suspected that 【their】 calibration readings had been corrupted by the magnetic anomaly.

Answer

their
When compound antecedents are joined by the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor', the pronoun must agree in number with the nearer antecedent (the proximity rule). Here, 'environmental technicians' is plural and closest to the blank, requiring the plural possessive pronoun 'their'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the compound antecedent connected by 'Neither... nor'.
The subjects joined by the correlative conjunction are 'the principal investigator' (singular) and 'the environmental technicians' (plural).
In standard formal English, when antecedents of different grammatical numbers are joined by 'neither... nor', the pronoun must agree with the nearer antecedent.
2
Determine which antecedent is closer to the pronoun position.
'the environmental technicians' is the antecedent closer to the blank and is plural.
The proximity rule dictates that agreement is governed by the noun phrase immediately preceding the verb phrase containing the blank.
3
Select the possessive pronoun that matches the plural antecedent.
The correct plural possessive pronoun is 'their'.
'their' correctly agrees in number with the plural noun 'technicians'.

Key Concept

Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement with Correlative Conjunctions
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Topics

Pronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

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