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I was wondering if the use of "neither/nor" is correct and comprehensible in the sentence:

Moreover, most probably neither was the snake linked to Cleopatra because of the erotic association nor the cat assigned to her because she was a voluptuous witch.

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    I suppose the sentence is grammatical but it is very hard to read. I suggest a complete re-write.
    – chasly - supports Monica
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 9:05
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    @chaslyfromUK I agree but at least the neither...nor construction is correctly applied, which is what the question was about.
    – WS2
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 9:11
  • Thx a lot! Actually, it's my translation of a piece of quite a serious scientific text. Equally hard to read in the original ;-) Could you suggest a way to rewrite it?
    – shogun
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 9:14
  • Done. See my answer.
    – chasly - supports Monica
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 9:22
  • I think your sentence wold benefit from adding "was" after "nor", to make the "nor" clause grammatically parallel to the "neither" clause.
    – Andreas Blass
    Commented Sep 26, 2015 at 20:22

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This use of neither is at best marginally grammatical. It is certainly extremely rare: all the examples of Neither do/does that I looked at in GlowBE (the Corpus of Global Web English) are "afterthought" - following a negative statement

He doesn't want to. Neither do I.

rather than "forethought"

? Neither does he want to nor do I.

(It's not even clear to me whether to invert the subject and verb in this construction or not: ?Neither he wants to nor do I.)

With other coordinates (noun phrases, prepositional phrases, verbs, or verb phrases) it is fine:

I want neither tea nor coffee.

I do it neither at home nor at work.

I neither wanted nor asked for this.

I neither rang the bell nor waited for them.

It's just full sentences where it doesn't occur. This is also true for the other forethought connector, both ... and.

I both rang the bell and waited.

but probably not

? Both did I ring the bell and I waited.

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  • Ok. How about this way: Moreover, most probably, the snake was not linked to Cleopatra because of the erotic association, neither was the cat assigned to her because she was a voluptuous witch.
    – shogun
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 10:28
  • @shogun, that is what I called the afterthought use: just with an asyndetic clause rather than a separate sentence.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 22:11
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I suppose the sentence is grammatical but I find it very hard to read.

A possible paraphrase would be:

Moreover, it was probably neither true that the snake was linked to Cleopatra because of the erotic association, nor that the cat was assigned to her because she was a voluptuous witch.

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  • Thx again. I guess your re-write reads clearer indeed ;-)
    – shogun
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 9:38
  • Or maybe this: "Moreover, in all likelihood, the linking of the snake to Cleopatra was not a result of the erotic association, nor was the assigning of the cat to her due to her being a voluptuous witch." In reality, of course, the linking of the snake to Cleopatra was by the snake's fangs.
    – Sven Yargs
    Commented Aug 27, 2015 at 20:07

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