Examkin

Question

Difficulty: Very hardSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Complete the sentence below by providing the correct forms of the verbs given in parentheses to maintain proper grammatical subject-verb agreement.

Answer:Neither the principal investigator nor the field supervisors who conducted the regional audit 【suspect】 (suspect) that more than one participant 【has】 (have) reported inconsistent symptoms during the study.

Answer

The first blank requires 'suspect' and the second blank requires 'has'.
For the first blank, the correlated structure 'neither... nor' connects the singular 'principal investigator' and the plural 'field supervisors'. Applying proximity concord, the verb agrees with the nearer plural subject 'field supervisors', resulting in 'suspect'. For the second blank, the subject 'more than one participant' consists of 'more than one' preceding a singular countable noun, which grammatically mandates the singular verb 'has'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the subject structure for the first blank governed by the correlated conjunctions 'neither... nor'.
The subject noun phrase closer to the verb is the plural noun 'field supervisors'.
According to the principle of proximity concord, when subjects are joined by 'neither... nor', the verb agrees in number with the subject nearer to it ('field supervisors'), requiring the plural verb form 'suspect'.
2
Analyze the noun phrase structure following the conjunction 'that' for the second blank.
The subject of the subordinate clause is 'more than one participant'.
In standard English grammatical concord, the structure 'more than one' modifying a singular countable noun ('participant') strictly takes a singular verb, requiring 'has'.

Key Concept

Proximity Concord with Correlated Conjunctions and 'More Than One' Grammatical Concord
Rate this question

Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

More questions from this topic