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Either/Or, Neither/Nor | Subject-Verb Agreement#1
Today we’ll discuss a fairly straightforward grammar concept, but it’s one that people get wrong pretty often:
Correlative conjunctions are pairs of words that work together to join words, phrases, or clauses. Some of these special conjunctive pairs are
either/or
neither/nor
both/and
not only/but also
whether/or
Today we’ll look at the specific use of two correlative conjunctions: either/or and neither/nor.
These two can be trickier than the rest because they join nouns while, weirdly enough, still keeping those nouns distinct from one another! Let’s look at some examples to clear up the confusion:
Either Joe or Sam will drive Dad’s car to the party.
Notice that the subject of this sentence is “Joe” and “Sam,” two people. However, the subjects are kept distinct because of the meanings of “either” and “or.” The sentence actually means
Either Joe will drive Dad’s car to the party, or Sam will drive Dad’s car to the party.
Here, we can see that the either/or construction is a shorter way of stating that only one of two people will drive Dad’s car; we just don’t know which one!
Because of this, singular nouns joined by either/or must take a singular verb, as in the following sentence:
Either the cat or the dog gets the new toy.
In other words:
Either the cat gets the new toy, or the dog gets the new toy.
Although it sounds strange to use a singular verb with a seemingly compound subject, splitting them up as we’ve done can help you understand why the singular verb is correct.
Now, let’s take a look at neither/nor, which follows the same grammatical rules:
Adam baked the cake for neither Mom nor Dad.
Neither/nor is distinct from either/or because it means that no one or nothing listed does or receives the action of the sentence. In this case, Adam didn’t bake the cake for Mom, and Adam didn’t bake the cake for Dad. He didn’t bake the cake for anyone listed!
Even still, the same rule applies: neither/nor, when used with the subject of the sentence, takes a singular verb.
Neither Mom nor Dad was able to find the car keys.
In other words: Mom was unable to find the car keys, and Dad was unable to find the car keys.
Make sense? Remember, Excelians, that this rule is only for singular nouns joined by the correlative conjunctions, but what happens when we have plural nouns being joined or one plural and one singular? Stay tuned for our next video to find out!
Chapter
0:00 Start
0:23 What is correlative conjunctions
0:54 Example of 'Either/or' and Explanation
2:08 Another Example and Explanation
2:17 Example of 'Neither/Nor' and Explanation
2:59 Another Example and Explanation
3:21 closing
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