It was nearly impossible to diagnose the girl’s illness even after thr

It was nearly impossible to diagnose the girl’s illness even after three hospitalizations, several months of therapy, and a near mental breakdown because no one medical professional – neither her therapist nor her doctors – were able to see the full scope of her symptoms.

(C) 2008 GMAT Club - v05#37

* neither her therapist nor her doctors – were able to see
* not even her therapist nor her doctors – were able to see
* including her therapist and her doctors – were able to see
* not even her therapist nor her doctors – was able to see
* neither her therapist nor her doctors – was able to see


Neither/ nor- the subject closes to the verb should agree with the subject.

Here See is the verb and doctors is the subject. Hence the correct choice should be were

I picked A. OA is E and explanation below:

This sentence tests the correct use of the phrase neither...nor as well as subject-verb agreement when subject and verb are split across a parenthetical phrase. The words no one before the hyphen indicate that the parenthetical expression must contain a negative expression, the word neither. Neither is idiomatically paired with the word nor. Also, the subject of the clause – no one medical professional – requires the singular verb was.

1. Were is a plural verb that does not agree with the singular no one medical professional.
2. Not even cannot be correctly idiomatically paired with nor, and were is an incorrect verb.
3. Were is a plural verb and does not agree with the singular subject of the clause; also, the word including does not sufficiently respond to the words no one, which come before the hyphen.
4. The words not even are not idiomatically correct when paired with the word nor.
5. The phrase neither...nor is idiomatically correct, and the singular verb was agrees with the subject no one medical professional.

The correct answer is E.

Can some one point what is wrong in my answer explanation?

+1 E

This is a S-V agreement problem. Notice that "neither her therapist nor her doctors" is between dashes. The subject of the subordinate clause "because no one... symptons" is "no one", which is always singular.

The GMAT will always try to put words between the subject and the verb. Your job is to find the subject first.

The corret idiom is "neither ... nor". We can easly eliminate all but A and E.
If we look at the phrase, it says "no one medical professional ( SINGULAR)" so the next part must mantain this structure.
IMO E

Dear Kanusha,
For figuring out the verb split, "was"/"were", we need to set aside the part within the dashes. That part, "neither her therapist nor her doctors", is an additional clarification, but not part and parcel of the grammatical backbone of the sentence. The subject of the verb is "no one medical professional", and both "no one" and "no one X" are singular. These demand a singular verb --- "no one was", not "no one were".
Does this make sense?
Mike

Zarrolou & MIke,

Dont you think in all the answer choices, pronoun "her" doesnt have an antecedent. The sentence talks abiout "girl's illness" but "girl" was no where mentioned.

Is this usage correct? If so why?

Dear maaadhu,
You are perfectly correct. The word "girl's" is in the possessive, and therefore absolutely cannot serve as an antecedent. Therefore the pronoun "her" has no antecedent. You are 100% correct: this construction is absolutely unacceptable in GMAT terms. I was focusing on the underlined splits only, so I missed this, but this is a clear and unambiguous mistake. It's very hard to write high quality GMAT SC practice questions, and whoever wrote this fell short of the mark on this particular question.

Here's a higher quality SC practice question for you:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/3225

Mike

I thought her is a possessive pronoun that can refer to girl’s illness.

Any comments?

Nice question!

I think you are referring to the "possessive poison" rule of MGMAT SC Guide, according to which something like
"Marc's house"(...)"his"<== cannot refer to Marc because the name Marc does not appear as such in the sentence.

This is quite a controversial rule, and I think has been removed in the latest edition of the book.
In the official questions I know that this rule has been mentioned by GMAC, but the in the problem (just one) in which something similar appeared, the explanation did not mention it as the reason why the option was incorrect. So I would suggest not to bother about it, as its importance is minimal .

Hope this helps a bit

use spoiler while posting answers and underline the required part in SC question.

'No one medical professional' is a singular subject, and requires singular verb 'was'.

hi Zarrolou and mikemcgarry
I understood that as per S-V agreement we need to use singular "was". but I am confused with the use of
Including vs. NeitherX nor Y
if the optn C would have been :
C) - including her therapist and her doctors – WAS able to see
E) - neither her therapist nor her doctors – was able to see

in this case will we still prefer E over C ??
I guess as the sentce says "NO ONE medical professional" - the use of neitherX norY is redundant & "Including" will correctly modify professional.

Please explain

Thanks in advance
Cheers...

Dear GuptaDarsh,
I'm happy to respond.

If option (C) had the singular verb, both (C) & (E) would be perfectly correct, and there really would be no good way to choose. Yes, "no one medical professional" is unambiguously clear, but for added rhetorical emphasis, we add what's between the dashes --- again, either (C) or (E) would be fine on that issue.

You have to understand: this question is of OK quality, but not an excellent question. Most of the questions from the OG and other official sources are truly excellent: this means that many different issues are at play among the answer choices. In this question, many of the answer choices are "one-trick ponies" --- there's just one problem, and if we fix that one problem, then the answer choice is perfectly correct. This is a characteristic of SC questions that I would call "second tier," that is, a notch below the standard of excellence that characterizes official questions.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

It was nearly impossible to diagnose the girl’s illness even after three hospitalizations, several months of therapy, and a near mental breakdown because no one medical professional – neither her therapist nor her doctors – were able to see the full scope of her symptoms.


Good question!! I agree that here we have singular subject and hence singular verb "was" will come in picture. But, if in case we had sentence like below ?

It was nearly impossible to diagnose the girl’s illness even after three hospitalizations, several months of therapy, and a near mental breakdown because neither her therapist nor her doctors – was/were able to see the full scope of her symptoms.

Which one, should be picked here ? Was or were ?
I will go with were as doctors is plural here, so verb next to it should be plural as well. Thoughts please.

Cheers,
Gaurav

Dear Gaurav,
That's an excellent question, and I happy to respond.

When we have a subject of the form Either A or B or Neither A nor B, then the SVA rule is that the verb should agree with latter term, B, and whether A is singular or plural is entirely irrelevant.
... neither her therapist nor her doctors were ... = correct
... neither her doctors nor her therapist was ... = correct

For a more extensive discussion, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/compound-s ... e-phrases/

Does all this make sense?
Mike

POE:

A, B, C) "One medical professional" is singular and requires WAS as opposed to were
D) Not even... Nor is not as good as NEITHER... NOR
E) Correct

It was nearly impossible to diagnose the girl’s illness even after three hospitalizations, several months of therapy, and a near mental breakdown because no one medical professional – neither her therapist nor her doctors – were able to see the full scope of her symptoms.


A) neither her therapist nor her doctors – were able to see

Incorrect - SV error, 'no one' is singular

B) not even her therapist nor her doctors – were able to see

Incorrect - not even....nor is wrong idioms, SV error

C) including her therapist and her doctors – were able to see

Incorrect - SV error, modifying error - 'her therapist nor her doctors' is plural whereas 'one medical professional' is singular

D) not even her therapist nor her doctors – was able to see

Incorrect - not even....nor is wrong idioms

E) neither her therapist nor her doctors – was able to see

Correct

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