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On LDOCE, at the definition page of "neither", there is one definition that describes the word as a conjunction, with the sentence:

The authorities were not sympathetic to the students’ demands, neither would they tolerate any disruption.

Is the usage of the word after a comma as a conjunction by itself as in the sentence really grammatical? If so, how often is "neither" used like this? Is this usage of "neither" as common in American English as it is in British English?

Thank you in advance!

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    Can you define "used like this" more precisely?
    – Ben Bolker
    Commented Jan 28, 2022 at 17:26
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    Notice that you can't insert and / but / yet / so ... for neither. 'Nor' and 'neither' trigger inversion, as do 'seldom' and 'rarely'. The FANBOYS approximation is too imperfect to be retained, and CGEL and ACGEL have alternative analyses.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 28, 2022 at 19:25
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    "and" and "but" can be used before "neither", I believe (not precisely sure which usages @EdwinAshworth is referring to). "not ..., but neither" or "not ..., and neither" both seem fine to me ("not ..., nor", "not ..., and nor" and "not ..., but nor" seem wrong or at least very unusual)
    – Ben Bolker
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 19:33
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    sorry. ", nor" sounds right. ", but nor" and ", and nor" sound unusual. ("but nor" is maybe a little worse than "and nor" ...)
    – Ben Bolker
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 23:06
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    @Ben Bolker Notice that you can't insert and / but / yet / so ... for neither. eg << *The authorities were not sympathetic to the students’ demands, and would they tolerate any disruption. >> // << The authorities were not sympathetic to the students’ demands ... and would they tolerate any disruption? >> changes the sentence structure.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 15:24

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  1. Yes, it is grammatical; do you have a particular reason to doubt the reliability of the source you quoted (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English)?

  2. Doesn't my answer to your previous question also cover this case? Specifically, in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), "neither" occurs 74071 times, while "neither" following a comma occurs 9902 times, so the frequency is 13% of the usage of "neither". Seems pretty common to me.

    I used "used following a comma" as a way to operationalize your statement "used like this"; if you have a more specific class of usage in mind, you should say so [although a more limited set of grammatical cases might be beyond my capabilities in corpus analysis].

    I don't have a handy corpus of British English, so I can't do the British/American usage comparison. In my personal experience (lived 3 years in England, 11 in Canada, more than that in the US) this doesn't stand out to me as an unusual usage in any of those places — although it does seem a little bit formal/old-fashioned.

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    I agree. The usage is fine, if slightly formal or elevated in tone. You could also replace "neither" with "nor." Using the absolute best wording and writing for the old New York times, I would say: "The authorities were neither sympathetic to the students' demands nor tolerant of any disruption.
    – Vegawatcher
    Commented Jan 28, 2022 at 1:02
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    I'm not sure that "used following a comma" operationalizes OP's "used like this". For example: "On Monday, neither Bob nor Mary showed up to work." "Neither" follows a comma but is not "a conjunction by itself" (as OP means).
    – MarcInManhattan
    Commented Jan 28, 2022 at 1:49
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    @MarcInManhattan, I agree. I can use wild cards to represent a word and can insert parts of speech, but I'm not sure how to properly restrict the search to the usage that OP is looking for. (I don't think I can search for "not [1 or more words], neither"; "not * *, neither brings up for example "While the girls' troubles are not downplayed , neither are their courage"
    – Ben Bolker
    Commented Jan 28, 2022 at 2:05
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    @BenBolker Yeah, I don't know how to do that either, unfortunately.
    – MarcInManhattan
    Commented Jan 28, 2022 at 2:06
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    '... a particular reason to doubt the reliability of the source ... quoted (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English)'. Here are two: Quirk et al class this usage of neither as an additive subjunct and Huddleston & Pullum classify it as an adverb operating as a connective adjunct.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 28, 2022 at 17:19

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