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Difficulty: Very hardSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Complete the sentence below by filling in each blank with the grammatically correct verb form.

Answer:The legal team, together with the external auditors, 【has】 established that neither the chief executive officer nor the board members 【are】 liable for the tax default under the current regulations.

Answer

The first blank requires 'has' and the second blank requires 'are'.
The correct verb choices are 'has' for the first blank and 'are' for the second. The first blank requires the singular verb 'has' to agree with 'The legal team', because parenthetical additions introduced by 'together with' do not pluralize the subject. The second blank requires the plural verb 'are' because correlative conjunctions like 'neither... nor' enforce proximity concord, where the verb agrees with the nearest subject element ('board members').

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the primary subject of the main clause and apply parenthetical concord rules.
The main subject is the collective noun phrase 'The legal team', which functions as a singular noun in this context. The intervening phrase 'together with the external auditors' is parenthetical.
Expressions such as 'together with', 'along with', 'as well as', and 'in addition to' do not form a compound plural subject. The verb must agree strictly with the primary head noun ('team'), taking the singular auxiliary 'has'.
2
Analyze the subject structure in the subordinate clause and apply the rule of proximity concord.
The subject of the clause is linked by the correlative conjunction 'neither ... nor', joining 'the chief executive officer' (singular) and 'the board members' (plural).
Under the principle of proximity concord governing correlative subjects ('either... or', 'neither... nor'), the verb agrees in number with the subject noun closest to it. Since 'board members' is plural and directly precedes the verb slot, the plural present verb 'are' must be used.

Key Concept

Subject-Verb Agreement (Parenthetical Expressions and Proximity Concord)
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Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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