In the following question, some part of the sentence may have errors. Find out which part of the sentence has an error and select the appropriate option. If a sentence is free from error, select No Error. Neither Lara (1)/ nor Carmen are (2)/ available today. (3)/ No Error (4)?

Option 2 : 2

The correct answer is '2' i.e. the error lies in this part.

• The error lies in the incorrect usage of the verb 'are'.
• 'Are' needs to be replaced with 'is'.
• Neither-nor is correlative conjunction and when they are used to connect two nouns of a sentence, the verb of the sentence should agree with the second noun of the sentence. 
  • Example: Neither Norway nor Switzerland is in the European Union.
• Here, the second noun is singular, therefore, the verb will be singular according to the subject-verb agreement.

Thus, the correct sentence is: Neither Lara nor Carmen is available today.

• Subject-verb agreement: It states that a singular subject (she, Bill, car) takes a singular verb (is, goes, shines), whereas a plural subject takes a plural verb. 
  • Example:
    • He is planning a trip to Kerala.
    • They are planning a trip to Kerala.
• Correlative Conjunction: Correlative conjunctions correlate, working in pairs to join phrases or words that carry equal importance within a sentence.