Neither...nor and not ... or/not ... nor constructions

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beat_gmat_09: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 437; Joined: Sat Nov 22, 2008 5:06 amFollowed by: 1 member; Location: India; Thanked: 50 times; GMAT Score:580

by beat_gmat_09 » Tue Apr 27, 2010 12:29 am

Neither ... nor constructions are correct on GMAT and do occur frequently.

In a similar way
Can not ... or construction be used to express two negative ideas ?
AND
Can not ... nor constrictions also be used in a similar way ?

eg-

1) He does not smoke or drink -> not ... or constrn
OR
He neither smokes nor drinks -> neither...nor constrn

2) Our main idea is not food, nor money. It is education. -> not ... nor
OR
Our main idea is neither food nor money. It is education. -> neither ... nor

Does GMAT test on these type of constructions apart from neither...nor ?

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Tue Apr 27, 2010 12:29 am

frank1: Legendary Member; Posts: 537; Joined: Fri Jan 22, 2010 10:06 pmFollowed by: 1 member; Thanked: 14 times

by frank1 » Tue Apr 27, 2010 9:17 am

ok i officially dont know about it...

but after reading question,i am bit curious...
are there any such consstructions that GMAT gaurantees that it wont be asked....i have not come across such official statement yet anywhere...may be just frequencies are different....

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lkm: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 51; Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:11 am; Thanked: 6 times

by lkm » Tue Apr 27, 2010 1:55 pm

beat_gmat_09 wrote:Neither ... nor constructions are correct on GMAT and do occur frequently.

In a similar way
Can not ... or construction be used to express two negative ideas ?
AND
Can not ... nor constrictions also be used in a similar way ?

eg-

1) He does not smoke or drink -> not ... or constrn
OR
He neither smokes nor drinks -> neither...nor constrn

2) Our main idea is not food, nor money. It is education. -> not ... nor
OR
Our main idea is neither food nor money. It is education. -> neither ... nor

Does GMAT test on these type of constructions apart from neither...nor ?

Well not exactly but AFAIK, in GMAT, you may face such sentence having multiple NOTs but not with sentence having two parts. With two parts, neither...nor construction is correct.

For example,

We do not smoke, drink and gamble at once. -> Here sentence means that we don't do all the three things at once. We may do or one at a time. So here NOT is added with first verb only but it is associated with all three verbs.

I know the above one is not a good example but you may find something like that on OG.

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