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Difficulty: Very hardPronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

Complete the following sentence by providing the grammatically correct possessive pronoun in the blank to maintain formal pronoun-antecedent agreement.

Answer:Neither of the female executives who attended the international summit had submitted 【her】 report before the deadline.

Answer

her
In formal Standard English, the distributive indefinite pronoun 'neither' is singular and serves as the true grammatical head of the subject. The intervening prepositional phrase 'of the female executives' specifies the gender (female) but does not change the singular number of the subject. Therefore, the singular feminine possessive pronoun 'her' is required for formal pronoun-antecedent agreement.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the grammatical antecedent of the blank.
The subject noun phrase is 'Neither of the female executives'. The head word of this noun phrase is the indefinite pronoun 'Neither'.
Pronouns must agree in number and gender with their syntactic antecedent, not with the noun inside the intervening prepositional phrase.
2
Determine the grammatical number and gender of the antecedent.
'Neither' is grammatically singular in formal Standard English. The modifier 'female executives' establishes female gender.
Indefinite pronouns such as 'neither', 'either', 'each', and 'every' take singular agreement in formal examination contexts like JAMB UTME.
3
Select the appropriate singular possessive pronoun.
The singular feminine possessive pronoun 'her' correctly corresponds to the singular female antecedent.
Using plural pronouns like 'their' violates formal indefinite pronoun concord rules.

Key Concept

Indefinite Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement with Intervening Phrases
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Topics

Pronouns and Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

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