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Zorluk: OrtaSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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

Cevap:Neither the chief researcher nor the laboratory technicians 【were】 available when the inspection team arrived.

Cevap

The correct verb to fill the blank is 'were'.
When compound subjects are connected by 'neither... nor...', the verb agrees in number with the subject noun phrase nearest to it. Here, the plural noun 'technicians' is adjacent to the verb slot, and the past tense indicator 'arrived' establishes that the past plural verb 'were' is required.

Adım Adım Çözüm

1
Analyze the subject structure of the sentence.
The sentence uses the correlative conjunction pair 'neither... nor...' joining two subjects: 'the chief researcher' (singular) and 'the laboratory technicians' (plural).
Correlative conjunctions require applying the rule of proximity concord.
2
Apply the rule of proximity concord.
The verb must agree in number with the subject noun phrase closest to the blank, which is the plural noun 'the laboratory technicians'.
Under proximity concord with 'neither... nor...', the nearest subject determines whether the verb is singular or plural.
3
Determine the correct tense and number for the verb.
Because the clause 'when the inspection team arrived' sets a past tense context, the required verb form is the past tense plural 'were'.
A plural subject combined with past tense context mandates the auxiliary verb 'were'.

Anahtar Kavram

Proximity Concord with Correlative Conjunctions
Tahmini Süre:1m 0s
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Konular

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

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