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.
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