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Is this variation of neither acceptable?

He could neither clearly identify the man who attacked him nor he could name the weapon with which he was attacked.

To my ears, this sentence sounds eccentric due to wrong position of neither. I think He could neither should be replaced by neither he could because nor is used before the subject he. But I'm not pretty sure. Please clear my doubt.

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  • Eliminate repeated elements which occur before neither: He could neither clearly identify ... nor name .. Mar 29, 2013 at 18:19
  • @StoneyB: What about Subject verb agreement?
    – Sudhir
    Mar 29, 2013 at 18:23
  • @StoneyB: Wouldn't it be possible to just remove the second "he could"?
    – Stephen
    Mar 29, 2013 at 19:02
  • @Stephen Exactly ... he could are the two repeated elements in the second clause which occur before neither in the first clause. Mar 29, 2013 at 19:42
  • @Sudhir The only finite verb is could; identify and name are both infinitives. Mar 29, 2013 at 22:44

3 Answers 3

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Using neither after could is surely possible. The Corpus of Contemporary American English has 200 sentences containing could neither.

Freud could neither ignore the new culture he was thrown into nor merge with it seamlessly.

He had tried to analyze the game at home and could neither remember nor deduce the development shown to him.

It could neither deliver Georgia to a Republican presidential candidate nor elect congressmen.

Because the tags used for the question, I guess you are asking if identify can be used with the third singular person. It is possible because the phrase is "he could identify"; even in the case you don't repeat "he could" as in the first example I shown, "he could" is implied, and you still use name, not names.

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Here's how the neither ... nor construction works.

You have two clauses, each with the same beginning:

  1. [A] NOT [B1]   ... [He could] not [clearly identify the man who attacked him]

    AND        and

  2. [A] NOT [B2]   ... [he could] not [name the weapon with which he was attacked]

Substitute neither for the first NOT and nor for the second NOT; AND is deleted; [A] is common to both clauses, so it may be omitted on its second appearance. That leaves:

[A] neither [B1] nor [B2] ... [He could] neither [clearly identify the man who attacked him] nor [name the weapon with which he was attacked]

You may also join two clauses with just neither, without nor; or with nor, without neither. This involves no deletion; neither or nor replaces and and you must put the finite verb of the second clause in the first position, immediately after neither :

He could not clearly identify the man who attacked him; neither could he name the weapon with which he was attacked.
He could not clearly identify the man who attacked him; nor could he name the weapon with which he was attacked.

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  • I don't see anything wrong with using nor instead of neither in your final example. In fact, I think I might prefer it (not a particularly strong preference, admittedly). Mar 30, 2013 at 14:07
  • @FumbleFingers Stupid of me to overlook that; I will amend. Mar 30, 2013 at 14:41
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    Right. I think it's well-worth making the point here on ELL. We know perfectly well that both neither and nor can be used in isolation provided there's at least a negated element earlier in the text. But learners may simply assume they always have to be used as a "matched pair" - which superficially looks like a nice easy "rule" to learn, but actually isn't consistently observed by native speakers, so it should best be described as a "tendency". Mar 30, 2013 at 15:06
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    @FumbleFingers Yes, and in fact it looks like OP has mixed up the paired and the im-paired uses. Mar 30, 2013 at 15:10
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This is an awkward sentence and I think the problem is not with the position of neither but its location next to "clearly". Though neither is not an adverb it has an 'adverb flavor' to it that makes its position ahead of 'clearly' sound strange, just as the following sentence is strange:

Hopefully soon he will come visit.

This sentence can be fixed by moving soon to the end -- but there is no sensible place that clearly can be moved in your sentence. One could try

He could neither identify his attacker clearly, nor he could name the weapon with which he was attacked.

Another alternative is to remove clearly altogether, since it carries so little meaning anyway:

He could neither identify the man who attacked him, nor he could name the weapon with which he was attacked.

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