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Zorluk: Çok zorSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Complete the sentence below by filling in each blank with the grammatically correct verb form.

Cevap:The principal investigator, as well as her lab technicians, 【was】 present in the conference room when neither the junior intern nor the senior analysts 【were】 able to locate the confidential file.

Cevap

The first blank requires 'was' and the second blank requires 'were'.
The first blank requires the singular past verb 'was' because quasi-conjunctions like 'as well as' do not pluralize the singular head noun 'principal investigator'. The second blank requires the plural past verb 'were' because correlative conjunctions governed by 'neither... nor' adhere to proximity concord, agreeing with the nearest noun phrase 'senior analysts'.

Adım Adım Çözüm

1
Determine the grammatical subject and correct verb agreement for the first blank.
The main grammatical subject is the singular noun phrase 'The principal investigator'. The phrase 'as well as her lab technicians' functions as a parenthetical prepositional adjunct.
Parenthetical expressions introduced by 'as well as', 'together with', or 'along with' do not alter the grammatical number of the subject. Thus, the singular verb 'was' is required.
2
Determine the grammatical subject and correct verb agreement for the second blank.
The subject structure uses the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor'. The subject closest to the verb position is 'the senior analysts', which is plural.
Under the rule of proximity concord, verbs following correlative conjunctions ('neither... nor') agree in number with the nearest noun phrase ('senior analysts'), requiring the plural verb 'were'.

Anahtar Kavram

Parenthetical Subject Concord vs Proximity Concord in Correlative Structures
Tahmini Süre:1m 30s
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Konular

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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