How would you answer this question? The answer A feels right but apparently the correct one is C. (Polish national English contest finale, I'd grade the difficulty at around C2)

Native speaker. I think C is probably more correct, but I could just as easily see myself saying A. I'm sure there's some grammar rule that dictates which is correct, but either option sounds natural.

Tbh I would have said “they had neglected to try to resolve” “Neglected to” is definitely correct, but “neglected to try (verb)ing” makes it sound like they had several options to choose from, and they didn’t choose that one. Eg: “They knew there was a problem with the computer, but they had neglected to try to find the source of the malfunction” Vs “For hours they attempted to fix the computer, but they had neglected to try turning it off and on again”

I'd guess it's a split infinitive. I don't even really know what they are but I know that Star Trek's "to boldly go" is a split infinitive because in fact the phrase is "to go boldly". So here I'd assume "trying to" is splitting the infinitive while "to try" is not. Most people don't speak following specific grammar rules at all times, though, so 'a' or 'c' would be said in casual speech.

Definitely C. You can neglect to try something or you can neglect something while trying to do something else.

C is the most correct. I'm pretty sure that grammatically speaking, you can either neglect a noun (e.g. "I neglected my garden and it wilted") or you can neglect *to* \[infinitive verb\] (e.g. "I neglected to water my garden") but you can't simply neglect \[present-tense verb\]. A is therefore incorrect because "neglected trying" is not grammatical (and B and D are incorrect because the verb tense doesn't match the second half of the sentence).

I think both are correct and as an American I tend to use "Neglect to" far more than Neglect plus Gerund. "Neglected to try" feels like start "Neglect trying" feels like a continual process I neglected to eat the pizza sitting on the table (I was too busy to think about pizza) I neglected eating the pizza to talk to my friends (I saw the pizza, but it wasn't important to me)

It's a garbage sentence overall. It may technically be grammatically correct with one of the options, but it's still so bad that I don't even want to argue for any of them. I mean, let's look at what this sentence says first: "Despite urgency, they had not done something, which made the team less productive." The structure is loose. There are three different parts to this sentence: 1. Despite urgency. 2. "they" had not done something. 2. resulted in something else. Expressing two ideas: 1. Despite urgency, they had not done something. 2. They had not done something, which resulted in something else. These ideas seem unrelated, but the author chose to link them in a single sentence anyway. It's also full of filler words: 1. urgency of the situation -> urgency 2. the long-standing conflicts within the team -> internal conflicts 3. which resulted in -> resulting in 4. a decline in -> declining 5. overall productivity -> productivity Despite the urgency, they ... internal conflicts, resulting in declining productivity and morale. The solutions aren't any better. If you make them less wordy, the options become: 1. had not tried resolving (past perfect) 2. have not tried resolving (present perfect) Both are grammatically valid, but option 1 is better in context; the context strongly implies the event happened in the past. Then we're left with the words I cut, which are not necessary to the sentence: 1. trying to resolve 2. to try resolving 3. to try to resolve The first suggests we're trying to do this now. The second is a little awkward. The third is more natural. Because we determined the sentence is probably in the past, 1 is out. The decision between 2 and 3 is picking the most idiomatic one. So, it should be "had neglected to try to resolve." Which is not an option. "Had neglected to try resolving" is also valid, so it is option C. That said, the sentence is already so fucked that none of the options would improve or hurt the sentence as a whole. They all express the same idea with the same level of clarity; the minor implicit tense-agreement issue you could introduce does not affect it. All options are equally correct.

There is no 100% right answer. That said C is the best possible solution. You can’t chose B or D as the use of resulted in past simple makes the present perfect “have neglected” imposible. Neglect and try have a similar relationship to the to infinitive and gerund forms of subordinate verbs. In A “they had neglected trying…” it is suggested that they were trying already but they started to not do enough. Given the context of the sentence it would appear that they weren’t even trying so it doesn’t quite match up. Examples He neglected caring for his cat( he didn’t care enough) He neglected to care for his cat( he didn’t care at all) Now after try the to infinitive and gerund have two separate interpretations as well. Using the gerund you are suggesting that they try it as an experiment. “Try adding honey to your tea, you might like it.” But if you use the to infinitive you are suggesting that they won’t be able to complete the action “try to add honey to your tea, I bet you can’t” So with all this in mind the best answer is C although it that resolving the conflicts was an experiment to see if it would work or not. The best answer would be “had neglected to try to resolve” as it says they didn’t even try to do something which was very difficult.

Nothing feels right about this sentence. This sentence is totally whack- longstanding conflicts... overall declines over time.. all preceded by the urgency of the situation... What? The three different timeframes, the process over time, but it's all somehow urgent? That doesn't make sense. The sentence is just one big trainwreck of a non sequitur.

Zooming out a bit, I'd probably just say "they neglected the long-standing conflicts" because it conveys exactly the same idea while being less wordy.

A is ok, c is better. Neither of them makes a very good sentence.

i would take a) because \- the neglect has to be 'had' because the thing it precedes (the result) is given in the past tense. \- 'to try resolving' is verbal usage. not wrong but a little less formal. i'm assuming a written, more formal context for the statement such as a news article. \-

This is effectively a two-part question: we must conjugate the verb correctly, and we must correctly identify idiomatic speech. The tense must be **past perfect** given the way the sentence ends, and the idiom in question is "to neglect to \[do something\]." While it may seem a logical construction, and certainly any native speaker would understand what you meant, "to neglect \[doing something\]" is non-idiomatic. Thus a) is the only correct answer.

(native speaker, professional writer) C is not incorrect, but A is the better choice in my view. "Neglected" has two slightly different meanings here. When followed by a verb ending in -ing, it generally means not paying sufficient care or attention to doing that thing. When followed by an infinitive verb it means not doing the thing at all. So if I "neglected practicing piano," it means I did not practice enough. But if I "neglected to practice piano," it means I didn't practice at all. The two constructions also suggest different time periods. In my example, "neglected practicing piano" sounds like it occurred over a period of time when I should have been practicing (last week for example), whereas "neglected to practice piano" sounds like I didn't do it on a particular occasion (yesterday, maybe). Here, there is not enough context to tell us which meaning was intended. It's possible that they did make some effort to resolve the conflicts within the team but they did not pay sufficient attention to the effort and therefore they "neglected trying to resolve." It's also possible that they did not try at all -- "neglected to try." But I think that construction is worse because "neglected to try \[X\]" suggests that the author is drawing a distinction between trying X and trying something else, as in this sentence: "He said strawberry was the best-tasting of the four flavors of ice cream in the shop, but he had neglected to try chocolate." Or: "He complained loudly that his keys were nowhere to be found but he had neglected to try asking his wife if she knew where they were." The given passage doesn't suggest that they neglected to try resolving the conflicts because they tried something else, so I think answer C is not the better choice. Even so, it's not technically incorrect.

(A) is the only one that sounds remotely like something a literate, adult English speaker would say. All that "to try" business is hot garbage.

"Neglect \~ing" just feels wrong to me. "Neglected to try resolving" also feels wrong for reasons that are hard to explain. (D) would be the best answer if the "have" was changed to "had". Personally, I don't think I'd combine "neglect" and "try". I'd say: "they had neglected to resolve..." Or: "they had made no effort to resolve..."

Is "have/had" really necessary here? Can someone explain?