rigth or wrong?

Elsa   Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:02 am GMT
I have learnt that correlative conjunctions (in this case the pair NEITHER-NOR) link PARALLEL grammatical structures and the conjunction is located inmediatly before the parallel word or structure you're linking. So... in this case, is this sentence correct?

I neither watch soaps, nor reality TV, but I love dramas.

Will somebody help me with this? Thanks.
Ant_222   Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:22 am GMT
I watch neither soaps nor reality TV, but I love dramas.

I am mot sure the original is correct because "neither" seems to modify "watch" instead of "soaps"...

It should be due to the "immediatly before the parallel" thing, I guess...
Lazar   Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:32 pm GMT
I agree with Ant_222; the sentence that you posted doesn't seem correct to me. It should be,

"I watch neither soaps nor reality TV, but I love dramas."

The word "neither" goes immediately before the parallel word or structure you're linking, and in this sentence, the parallel words are the nouns "soaps" and "reality TV", so it goes before "soaps". "Neither" would go before "watch" if you had a series of parallel verbs, for example:

"I neither watch soaps nor talk about them."

I should note that it's not uncommon for people to break parallelism rules in everyday speech, so it's not an egregious error; but it still sounds a bit "off" to me when they do it.