Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the

Question

Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

A) Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

B) Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's policy.

C) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation and their main competitor's environmental policy.

D) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned with the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

E) Both the president and the vice president were unconcerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

godot53 · Accepted Answer

You are correct with your analysis for D, but in SC we "eliminate", rather than "select". 
In D - "Neither the president nor the vice president" is actually singular, so "their" is incorrect. 
While in E - "Both.." makes it plural, hence "their" works well. 
--
Better way to proceed is to see the splits - "was/were", and then decide what is needed for the following pronoun "their"?

daagh · Answer

Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

A) Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

B) Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's policy.

C) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation and their main competitor's environmental policy.

D) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned with the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

E) Both the president and the vice president were unconcerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

When we say we are concerned with, we mean to say that we are dealing with. For example, we say that 
The Travel Dept is concerned with my flight booking

An ICU in a hospital is concerned with very sick people. 
Here, we mean that the travel dept. deals with ticket booking and the ICU deals with sick people. 
We do not mean that the travel dept. is very worried by ticket booking or that the ICU is literally tormented by the very sick condition.

However, when we say we are 'concerned about', we mean that we are 'worried by'. 
I am concerned about my son's performance

The President is concerned about the neo-migrants into his country.

We may perhaps see the difference between both the idioms. In the light of this perception, I think the idiom 'concerned with' in D does not make much sense. In addition, whenever nor/or is used, the effective subject turns out to be the noun that is just before the verb and as the deciding subject is the vice president, we must settle for the singular 'his' rather than 'their'. On the other hand, E has no sub-verb or sub-pronoun number agreement issues and fittingly uses an appropriate idiom.

applicant1992 · Answer

IMO it should be D because:
1. SV agreement: Neither X nor Y . Here verb is defined by Y which is singular i.e. Vice President.
2. Concerned with is the correct idiom.
3. Between X and Y parallelism is maintained.

However, I am not sure why E is the OA? Isn't Concerned about a wrong idiom?

egmat

applicant1992 · Answer

Shouldn't D be the correct answer? My thoughts are highlighted in the reply on the thread.

broall · Answer

Neither X nor Y + singular verb. Hence A, B are eliminated.

In C, the meaning is changed, so C is eliminated.

Now, D & E are left.
(1) be (un)concerned about/with sth: (un)interested in sth.
(2) be (un)concerned about sth: (not) worried about sth.

Now, I think the usage in (2) is more suitable for the sentence. I dont think that "their" here need to go with plural verb. Hencen E is the correct answer.

abhishekdadarwal2009 · Answer

Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

A) Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.
B) Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's policy.
C) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation and their main competitor's environmental policy.
D) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned with the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's. 
 E) Both the president and the vice president were unconcerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

Although the Neither X nor Y and the y's number is used is the thing we look here but thats just step 1.

after this we are left with C and D. but both of these choices use 'their' to refer to the president and the vice president. so they must be plural entity, and that can only be done with choice E where the usage of both makes the entity plural.

E is the correct answer.

sayantanc2k · Answer

E is definitely wrong:

Consider the following:
 A AND B are... 
The negative of the above statement is:
 A OR B are not...

A AND B are not...  wrong - implies: A and B not together (but one of them may be)........wrong meaning.

OA has been changed to D (after rectifying the pronoun issue).

kivalo · Answer

Well, Kaplan's answer was E. Their explanation is that 'concerned with' is a wrong idiom in D because it means something more like 'involved in' and not 'worried about'. (Question is from workshop video)

adityapareshshah · Answer

Hi  sayantanc2k ,
Thanks but can you explain little more on why E is wrong. The given explanation did not clear my doubt.

Thanks.

sayantanc2k · Answer

The point has been further explained by shekyonline here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/neither-the- ... l#p1826707 Moreover remembering this logical operator might help: NOT (A AND B) = (NOT A) OR (NOT B).

US09 · Answer

"concerned with" = involved with
"concerned by/about" = worried about, troubled about.

Given the intended meaning of the statement, the correct idiomatic usage should be "concerned about". Hence E. OA seems debatable.

AkshdeepS · Answer

A) Neither the president nor  the vice president were  concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

B) Neither the president nor  the vice president were  concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's policy.

C) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their  own corporation  and their  main competitor's environmental policy.
 
  D) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned with the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.
  
E)  Both the president and the vice president were unconcerned  about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

A and B are out because of plural verb "were".

C is out for wrong comparison.

From D and E, both are grammatically correct, but I will go with D as it keeps the original sense of question.

Abhishek009 · Answer

Concerned with is Idiomatically Correct in GMAT, please go through this link of ECONOMIST https://gmat.economist.com/gmat-advice/ ... -know-gmat

SonalSinha803 · Answer

Concerned with is Idiomatically Correct in GMAT, please go through this link of ECONOMIST https://gmat.economist.com/gmat-advice/ ... -know-gmat Yes concerned with is idiomatically correct but correct answers also depend on the context. Concerned about - worried about Concerned with - related to or involved with. Meaning significantly changes. Sent from my Lenovo K53a48 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

PP777 · Answer

Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

Meaning of the sentence : The President and vice President were not concerned about the negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

Errors in the original sentence : Singular subject( the vice President ) should have singular verb.

Rule for Neither X nor Y - Verb should agree to the closest noun(here, it's Y)

A) Neither the president nor the vice president  were  concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.  Subject-verb agreement error

B) Neither the president nor the vice president  were  concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's policy.  Subject-verb agreement error

C) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned about the pervasive negative comparison  between their own corporation and their main competitor's environmental policy.  
 Comparison error. Here, the comparison is between own corporation and the competitor's eenvironmental policy

D) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned with the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.  Correct
Singular subject (the vice president) agrees with the singular verb(was)

E)  Both  the president and the vice president were unconcerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.  Meaning change

Skywalker18 · Answer

Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

A) Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's. -- Incorrect -- subject-verb agreement issue -- the vice president was

B) Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's policy. -- Incorrect -- subject-verb agreement issue -- the vice president was

C) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation and their main competitor's environmental policy. -- illogical comparison -- corporation and competitor's environmental policy

D) Neither the president nor the vice president was concerned with the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's.

E) Both the president and the vice president were unconcerned about the pervasive negative comparison between their own corporation's environmental policy and their main competitor's. -- Correct -- Some posts have stated that meaning in Option E changes. I do understand that option D talks about the President and Vice-president individually whereas option E talks about the President and Vice-President together , but in my opinion the change is subtle and not illogical and Pronoun their is a bigger issue in option D

AjiteshArun  ,  GMATNinja  ,  mikemcgarry  ,  egmat  ,  sayantanc2k ,  RonPurewal  ,  DmitryFarber  ,  MagooshExpert  ,  ccooley  ,  daagh  , mcelroytutoring , other experts -- please enlighten

mcelroytutoring · Answer

Hi  Skywalker18 ,

Well, first of all this is a Kap. question, not an official GMAT question, so I am not going to spend much time on it.

However, it's OK to write "their" later in the sentence in Choice D, because at that point we are referring to both the president and the vice president of the corporation at the same time (although we are referring them individually at the beginning of the sentence, which is why we must use singular verbs there).

Pro tip: you can remember that the word "neither" is singular by the phrase "neither one," because "one" is the very definition of singular! This trick also works with other singular words commonly mistaken as plural nouns

Neither = neither one = singular
Either = either one = singular
Each = each one = singular
Any = any one = singular 
None = not one = singular

-Brian

amlan2018 · Answer

Hi Experts, the current explanations present for this questions are ambiguous.

Could you please let us know your view regarding how to eliminate option "D" here and why to choose option "E" here.

I selected "E" btw.

KarishmaB · Answer

Actually,  daagh  has given very clear explanation above.

Option (D) uses "Neither nor" so subject is the noun closer to the verb. The subject (vice president) is singular and hence the use of singular verb "was". This also means that pronouns referring to the subject must be singular and hence the use of "their" is incorrect. We need to use "her/his".

(D) also has the idiomatic issue of "concerned with" which is incorrect. When you worry about something, you are "concerned about" it.

Option (E) clearly has a plural subject "Both the president and the vice president" and hence needs plural verb "were" and plural pronoun "their". Hence all is in order here.

Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

Neither the president nor the vice president were concerned about the

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