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Question

Difficulty: MediumSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Neither the chief medical officer nor the resident nurses ______ satisfied with the new hospital guidelines announced during the morning briefing. Which verb form correctly completes the sentence?

  1. A
    was
  2. wereAnswer
  3. C
    is
  4. D
    has been

Answer

The correct verb form is the plural past-tense verb 'were'.
The verb form 'were' correctly applies proximity concord. When compound subjects are linked by 'neither... nor', the verb must agree in number with the subject closest to it. Because 'resident nurses' is plural, the plural verb 'were' is required to complete the past-tense sentence.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the syntactic structure of the compound subject.
The sentence contains two subjects ('the chief medical officer' and 'the resident nurses') connected by the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor'.
Correlative conjunctions dictate the application of proximity concord.
2
Apply the rule of proximity concord.
Under proximity concord, the verb agrees with the subject nearest to the verb gap, which is the plural noun phrase 'resident nurses'.
The nearer subject determines the grammatical number of the verb.
3
Select the verb option that matches both grammatical number and tense.
'were' is plural and aligns with the past-tense narrative context ('announced during the morning briefing').
The other options ('was', 'is', 'has been') are all singular verb forms.

Key Concept

Proximity Concord with Correlative Conjunctions
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Topics

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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