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Difficulty: Very hardPronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

Consider the following sentence:

"Neither the chief curator nor the archival assistants who cataloged the ancient manuscripts presented _____ evaluation to the board of trustees."

In the sentence above, which pronoun correctly fills the blank to maintain formal rules of pronoun-antecedent agreement?

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

Answer

The correct pronoun is 'their' because when compound antecedents are joined by the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor', the pronoun must agree in number with the antecedent closer to it.
The choice 'their' is correct because when two antecedents are joined by 'neither... nor', formal English grammar requires the pronoun to agree in person and number with the antecedent closer to the pronoun. Here, the plural noun phrase 'archival assistants' is nearer to the blank than the singular 'chief curator', so the plural possessive pronoun 'their' must be used.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the antecedent structure in the sentence.
The sentence contains a compound antecedent joined by the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor': 'the chief curator' (singular) and 'the archival assistants' (plural).
Determining how the antecedents are connected establishes which grammatical rule applies.
2
Apply the rule of proximity for correlative conjunctions.
When subjects/antecedents are connected by 'neither... nor', the pronoun must agree with the nearer antecedent, which is 'archival assistants'.
The noun phrase closest to the pronoun position dictates the agreement features (number and person).
3
Select the pronoun matching the nearer antecedent in number.
Since 'archival assistants' is a plural noun phrase, the third-person plural possessive pronoun 'their' is required.
Plural antecedents demand plural pronouns to maintain proper grammatical concord.

Key Concept

Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement with Correlative Conjunctions (Rule of Proximity)
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Topics

Pronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

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