Concord Under Pressure: Editing a Literary Day Speech
Tunde is editing a speech for the school's literary day. The draft contains four disputed verb choices: (1) 'The panel of judges, together with the timekeeper, was/were seated before the hall filled.' (2) 'Neither the contestants nor the adjudicator has/have seen the questions.' (3) 'A number of parents have/has complained.' (4) 'The number of complaints have/has fallen.' His teacher marks three of the four choices wrong. Tunde argues that in each case the verb should agree with the nearest noun. The teacher replies that proximity is only one principle and that it does not apply everywhere. The speech must be grammatically defensible and must sound natural when read aloud. Tunde has 20 minutes and no grammar textbook. He also wants to avoid a sentence that a strict examiner could mark wrong even if it sounds acceptable in speech.
1. Resolve all four choices. For each, name the principle that decides it and state why the 'nearest noun' rule does not apply.
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'The panel ... was seated.' The head of the subject is 'panel' (singular). 'Together with the timekeeper' is a parenthetical addition, not part of a compound subject, so it cannot pull the verb into the plural.
'Neither the contestants nor the adjudicator has seen ...' With 'neither ... nor', the verb agrees with the nearer subject; 'adjudicator' is singular, so 'has'. This is the one place where proximity is the correct rule.
'A number of parents have complained.' 'A number of' means 'many', so it takes a plural verb.
'The number of complaints has fallen.' 'The number' means the total, so it is singular.
The nearest-noun rule is not general: it applies to correlative constructions such as either/or and neither/nor, not to parenthetical phrases or to fixed expressions like 'a number of' versus 'the number of'.
2. Which sentence would you rewrite to remove dispute, and what rewrite would you recommend? Explain why the rewrite is clearer.
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Rewrite sentence 2: 'The contestants have not seen the questions, and neither has the adjudicator.' The original 'Neither the contestants nor the adjudicator has...' is correct, but a listener may hear the plural 'contestants' first and think 'have' is required. Splitting the sentence removes the proximity trap and keeps the same meaning. Alternatively, 'Neither the contestants nor the adjudicator has seen the questions' can stand if Tunde is confident; but the split version is more robust for a speech read aloud. The rewrite does not change formality; it simply removes a point where the ear and the rule conflict.
3. Tunde says 'it sounds natural, so it must be right.' Evaluate that claim using one of the four sentences.
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The claim is unsafe. 'A number of parents has complained' may sound acceptable to some speakers because 'number' is singular, but standard usage treats 'a number of' as plural. Conversely, 'The panel ... were seated' can sound natural in British English when the panel is thought of as individuals, but an examiner looking for grammatical concord with the singular head will prefer 'was'. In an exam, the mark scheme rewards the standard rule, not personal intuition. Tunde should use sound as a check for readability, not as a substitute for identifying the subject.