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Question

Difficulty: Very hardSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Complete the sentence below by supplying the correct verb forms in the blanks to maintain proper grammatical subject-verb agreement.

Answer:The chief legal auditor, no less than the forensic accountants who 【have】 audited the firm's offshore accounts, 【maintains】 that the financial discrepancy was intentional.

Answer

The first blank requires 'have' and the second blank requires 'maintains'.
The correct verb for the first blank is 'have' because the relative pronoun 'who' refers to the plural antecedent 'forensic accountants'. The correct verb for the second blank is 'maintains' because the principal subject of the sentence is the singular noun phrase 'The chief legal auditor'. The intervening expression 'no less than...' functions as a quasi-conjunction and does not pluralize the main subject.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the subject and structure governing the first blank within the dependent relative clause.
The relative pronoun 'who' introduces the clause and refers to its plural antecedent 'the forensic accountants'.
A relative pronoun takes a verb that agrees in number with its antecedent, so the plural auxiliary verb 'have' must be used.
2
Analyze the main subject and intervening parenthetical phrase governing the second blank.
The primary subject of the main clause is 'The chief legal auditor', which is singular. The phrase 'no less than the forensic accountants...' is a quasi-conjunction (parenthetical modifier) and does not make the subject plural.
Expressions such as 'no less than', 'as well as', 'together with', and 'alongside' do not form compound subjects. The main verb must agree solely with the singular grammatical subject, requiring 'maintains'.

Key Concept

Concord with Quasi-Conjunctions and Relative Pronoun Antecedents
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Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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