Select the correct option: Neither the principal investigator ___ the co-authors anticipated the backlash.

Correct — A. The trigger is Neither, the first word of the sentence. Neither opens a correlative pair, and its partner is nor.

'Neither the principal investigator nor the co-authors anticipated the backlash.' The pair joins two subjects that share one verb, anticipated → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  or — Or is the partner of either. Formal English pairs neither with nor, so 'Neither the principal investigator or the co-authors' breaks the pair the first word set up.
• (c)
  and — And is the partner of both, as in 'both the investigator and the co-authors'. After neither, and leaves the pair incomplete.
• (d)
  nor did — Nor did opens a new clause with a bare verb: 'nor did the co-authors anticipate it'. Here the verb stays anticipated, and 'did ... anticipated' marks the past twice.

Correlative conjunctions come in fixed pairs that join two matching parts: either ... or, neither ... nor, both ... and, not only ... but also.

Here neither ... nor joins two subjects, the principal investigator and the co-authors, which share one verb. Nothing but nor is needed between them.

With neither ... nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject: 'Neither the investigator nor the co-authors were ready.' The past form anticipated is the same for both, so agreement does not show here.

Key facts

• Neither pairs with nor, either with or, and both with and.
• With neither ... nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject.
• Nor did takes inversion and a bare verb: nor did they anticipate it.
• Each half of a correlative pair must be followed by the same kind of phrase.

Common traps

• Choosing nor did because it sounds more formal, without checking that the verb anticipated stays in the past form
• Choosing or by ear, because neither and or both mark alternatives

No directly related past PYQ was found.