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Difficulty: MediumPronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

Which of the following pronouns correctly completes the sentence below in accordance with standard rules of pronoun-antecedent agreement?

"Neither the chief medical officer nor the attending nurses could conceal ______ exhaustion after the thirty-hour emergency shift."

  1. theirAnswer
  2. B
    her
  3. C
    its
  4. D
    his or her

Answer

The correct pronoun is 'their' because when subjects are joined by 'neither... nor', the pronoun agrees with the nearer antecedent, which is the plural noun 'nurses'.
When compound antecedents are connected by the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor', standard formal English syntax dictates that the pronoun agrees in number with the antecedent closest to it. In this sentence, 'attending nurses' is plural and immediately precedes the blank, requiring the plural possessive pronoun 'their'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the antecedent structure in the sentence
The sentence features compound subjects joined by 'neither... nor': 'the chief medical officer' (singular) and 'the attending nurses' (plural).
Determining the conjunction structure dictates the grammatical rule for pronoun alignment.
2
Apply the proximity rule for compound antecedents linked by 'neither... nor'
The pronoun must agree in gender and number with the closer antecedent ('attending nurses').
In correlative structures like 'neither... nor', agreement is governed by the noun phrase nearest to the pronoun slot.
3
Select the pronoun form matching the plural noun 'attending nurses'
'their' is the third-person plural possessive pronoun required.
'attending nurses' is plural, so a plural possessive pronoun is mandatory.

Key Concept

Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement with Correlative Conjunctions (Neither... Nor)
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Topics

Pronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

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