2
  • Neither I belong to "classA" nor I belong to "classB".
  • Neither I belong to "classA" nor I do to "classB".
  • I neither belong to "classA" nor "classB".

I want to know which one of the above three sentences conforms to correctness.

And if there's a better way to form the above sentence so that it might sound good and become grammatically correct then suggest that please.

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    I belong neither to class A nor to class B.
    – Khan
    Apr 2, 2016 at 4:49

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
2

Out of the three provided, the last one is most correct:

I neither belong to "classA" nor "classB".

"Neither" and "nor" are normally used in the pattern, "neither 'A' nor 'B'". The subject, "I", comes before "neither". I think the most correct way to say this is:

I belong to neither "classA" nor "classB".

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    Please edit to include an explanation of why this is correct; answers without explanation do not teach the patterns of the language well.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Apr 2, 2016 at 3:38
  • Why the above three are not correct in your sense? Please explain a bit so that I can understand. Thanks @mmarkman
    – 1000111
    Apr 2, 2016 at 3:57
  • I've doubt on the second. @mmarkman. Thanks for the answer.
    – 1000111
    Apr 3, 2016 at 17:14
2

If somebody says "I do not smoke", you might reply "Neither do I" or "nor do I". Note that we add do when we are expressing negatives, and the word order changes next to "Neither" or "nor". I don't know why we change the word order- it sounds very old-fashioned- but we still do. Here is an NGram that shows that "Neither do I" is the only form in common use.

With neither and nor you must have exactly the same stuff in both parts: you can do it the long way and have a complete phrase, or the short way and have just one word. Here is the long way, with a complete phrase in both parts:

Neither do I belong to "classA" nor do I belong to "classB".

And here is the short way, with just a single word in both parts:

I belong to neither "classA" nor "classB".

Note that there is no do: this is because "belong" is outside the neither/nor, so it's not negative. If we moved the negative to the start of the sentence, it would be required:

I do not belong to either "classA" or "classB".

Improve this answer
0
0

I only want to enlarge the explanation when a negative adverb starts a sentence (ex: rarely, seldom, never, neither..nor, not only... but also... etc., etc. To be more emphatic, you can start the sentence with the negative adverb, what forces inversion and this may happen in any tense, not only simple present as in the given example.

  1. I seldom saw him last month. (seldom did I see him last week)

  2. I will never see him again. (Never will I see him again)

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .