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Sajjad1994
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Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the 21 Jun 2017, 10:31
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E
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!

Difficulty:

15% (low)

Question Stats:

69% (00:40) correct 31% (00:40) wrong based on 186 sessions

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Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the passage of the controversial bill.

(A) Neither the council members nor the mayor take

(B) Neither the council members or the mayor takes

(C) Neither the council members take nor the mayor takes

(D) Neither the mayor nor the council members takes

(E) Neither the council members nor the mayor takes

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E
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Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the 21 Jun 2017, 10:40
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Rules concerning neither.. nor are as follows:

1. Verb must agree in number with the subject closer to the verb.
2. Both, the neither and not portions must be grammatical similar.

Option E, corrects both these errors and must be the correct answer.
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Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the 21 Jun 2017, 11:09
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SajjadAhmad
Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the passage of the controversial bill.

(A) Neither the council members nor the mayor take
(B) Neither the council members or the mayor takes
(C) Neither the council members take nor the mayor takes
(D) Neither the mayor nor the council members takes
(E) Neither the council members nor the mayor takes

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Correct answer must be (E) for the highlighted errors in other options...
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Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the 21 Jun 2017, 12:00
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Imo E
The verb should match the subject that comes after nor.

Sent from my ONE E1003 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app
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Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the 21 Jun 2017, 18:41
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SajjadAhmad
Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the passage of the controversial bill.

(A) Neither the council members nor the mayor take
(B) Neither the council members or the mayor takes
(C) Neither the council members take nor the mayor takes
(D) Neither the mayor nor the council members takes
(E) Neither the council members nor the mayor takes

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The split here is between take vs takes and idiom usage.

Usage of neither with nor is appropriate idiom
Rule:
When the idiom neither/nor is used the verb takes the closest subject. ie. the mayor has to be subject,therefore takes should be used.

Therefore Option E is correct
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Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the 31 Oct 2019, 22:35
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Official Explanation

The general rule is that when two distinct words or phrases are joined by the correlatives either . . . or, neither . . . nor, or not only . . . but also, the number (singular or plural) of the word or phrase nearer to the verb determines the number of the verb.

Choices (A) and (D) are wrong for that reason (“mayor take” and “council members takes”).

Choice (B) is wrong because Neither is incorrectly correlated with or (rather than nor).

Choice (C) is wrong because of the insertion of take; in this construction, both neither and nor must be followed by the same part of speech.

The correct answer is (E).
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Neither the council members nor the mayor take responsibility for the 21 Oct 2022, 04:31
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