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Zorluk: OrtaSubject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Complete the sentence below by supplying the grammatically correct verb form in the blank.

Cevap:Neither the lead auditor nor the financial consultants 【were】 available to answer questions during yesterday's press conference.

Cevap

The correct verb form to fill the blank is 'were'.
In English grammatical concord, when two subject elements are linked by correlative conjunctions such as 'neither... nor...', the verb agrees in number with the subject noun phrase nearest to it. Here, the plural noun phrase 'the financial consultants' immediately precedes the verb position, making the plural past tense verb 'were' the grammatically correct choice.

Adım Adım Çözüm

1
Analyze the sentence structure and locate the subject.
The subject is compound and connected by the correlative conjunction 'neither... nor...', joining 'the lead auditor' (singular) and 'the financial consultants' (plural).
Understanding the conjunction determines which grammatical agreement rule applies.
2
Apply the rule of proximity concord.
The verb must agree with the subject noun phrase closest to it, which is the plural noun phrase 'the financial consultants'.
When subjects are joined by 'neither... nor...', proximity concord dictates that the verb takes the number and person of the noun directly preceding the verb slot.
3
Select the appropriate past tense verb form.
'were' is the plural past tense form of the auxiliary verb 'to be'.
The temporal marker 'yesterday' indicates past time, requiring the past tense plural verb 'were'.

Anahtar Kavram

Proximity Concord with Correlative Conjunctions
Bu soruyu puanla

Konular

Subject-Verb Agreement (Concord)

Bu konudan daha fazla soru