---
title: With "neither ... nor", the verb agrees with the closer subject: "Ne… — Grammar puzzles, part one · tree and pragmatics
description: With "neither ... nor", the verb agrees with the closer subject: "Neither the cat nor the dogs are hungry." Who acts: verb, cat. A sentence of the lesson «Grammar puzzles, part one» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grammar puzzles, part one, sentence 15

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With "neither ... nor", the verb agrees with the closer subject: "Neither the cat nor the dogs are hungry."

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**Who acts:** verb, cat · **What happens:** agree, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Grammar puzzles, part one» of the language course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (verb, cat), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:011-grammar-puzzles-part-one.lesson:15
# text = With "neither ... nor", the verb agrees with the closer subject: "Neither the cat nor the dogs are hungry."
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 011-grammar-puzzles-part-one.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
3	neither	neither	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
4	...	...	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
5	nor	nor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	appos	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	verb	verb	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	agrees	agree	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	closer	close	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	14	amod	_	_
14	subject	subject	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
15	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	24	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=19:punct
17	Neither	neither	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	19	cc:preconj	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nsubj	_	_
20	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	22	cc	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	dogs	dog	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	conj	_	_
23	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	24	cop	_	_
24	hungry	hungry	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	parataxis	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	24	punct	_	_
26	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	24	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed polarity=none

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **agree** *speech: agree* | present | the verb |  |  |  |  | with neither; with the closer subject | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V PP.co-agent how S»: agent=Agent with neither=Co-Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | present | the cat nor the dogs |  |  |  |  | hungry *property* | tree rules |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:language:011-grammar-puzzles-part-one.lesson:15`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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