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Difficulty: Very hardSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Complete the sentence below by filling in the blanks with the grammatically correct verb forms that observe the rules of concord.

Answer:Neither the lead investigator nor the research assistants who were deployed to the field 【were】 aware that more than one of the archival specimens 【was】 corrupted during transit.

Answer

The first blank requires 'were' and the second blank requires 'was'.
The correct combination of answers is 'were' for the first blank and 'was' for the second blank. For the first gap, the proximity rule governs subjects joined by 'neither... nor', causing the verb to agree with the plural noun 'research assistants'. For the second gap, the fixed grammatical structure 'more than one' mandates a singular verb ('was').

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Determine the subject and concord rule for the first blank.
The subject uses the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor'. Under the rule of proximity concord, the verb agrees in number with the closer subject noun phrase 'the research assistants', which is plural. Thus, the plural verb 'were' is required.
When subjects are connected by 'neither... nor', proximity dictates that the noun closest to the verb governs agreement.
2
Determine the subject and concord rule for the second blank.
The noun phrase introducing the clause is 'more than one of the archival specimens'. The expression 'more than one' strictly takes a singular noun and a singular verb ('was').
In standard English grammatical concord, 'more than one' operates as a structural singular subject despite its plural semantic meaning.

Key Concept

Correlative Proximity Concord and 'More Than One' Structural Concord
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Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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