<p>This one is from Barron's:</p>
<p>(To) the disappointment of the crowd, (neither) the president nor (any) of his aides (were) able to attend the ceremony. (No error)</p>
<p>The correct answer is D, which is (were).</p>
<p>But I think in neither-nor structure, the verb should agree with its nearer noun, which is "any of his aides", so "were" should be correct.</p>
<p>Please tell me if i'm wrong.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Actually “any of his aides” is singular just because of the term ANY.</p>
<p>same goes for terms like:</p>
<p>anybody
anyone
everybody
everyone</p>
<p>barron says ‘any’ with a plural noun is used as plural. But anyone, anything, etc, are singular</p>
<p>I don’t understand, help!</p>
<p>“Any” (like most, all, some) is dependent on the noun it modifies. So “any of the kids” = plural, but “any of the milk” = singular.</p>
<p>Neither-nor has a special rule: the subject closest to the verb controls the verb’s number. So “neither John nor his sisters ARE coming to the party” but “neither the girls nor their brother IS coming to the party”.</p>
<p>marvin100, so shouldn’t “were” be correct in the question stated?</p>
<p>Yep, that’s right.</p>
<p>I thought so. I’m clueless when it comes to grammatical rules. I usually just go with whatever sounds right, which is probably why my SAT writing score was less than desirable.</p>