He is neither obliged to attend the meeting nor to deliver the speech

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
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He is neither obliged to attend the meeting nor to deliver the speech.

I’m not sure if ‘neither’ is used properly in this sentence.

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Yes, ‘neither’ is used correctly here.

He is neither obliged to attend the meeting nor to give the speech.

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@Torsten, I beg to disagree with you.

The first component of the correlative is not correctly placed.
It should be: He is obliged neither to attend the meeting nor to deliver the speech.

  1. He is not obliged to attend the meeting.
  2. He is not obliged to deliver the speech.
    The common phrase is: He is obliged (‘not’ is dropped since the correlative has the negator element).
    The varying phrases are: to attend the meeting and to deliver the speech.
    Now, we need to use the common phrase once, and place the correlatives before the varying phrases and join them.
    Accordingly, we have: He is obliged neither to attend the meeting nor to deliver the speech.
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And nevertheless I am convinced that the following sentence is correct and sounds natural: He is neither obliged to attend the meeting nor to give the speech.

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Yes, Torsten, it will convey the meaning in a spoken context. But not in formal or written contexts, in my opinion.

However, please review your position with regard to the following to be combined with the same correlative:

He is not obliged to attend the meeting.
He is not inclined to deliver the speech.

(This aspect has created a lot of confusion among foreign learners of English. I have often had to explain it and convince my students too the same way)

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I think the sentence “He is neither obliged to attend the meeting nor to give the speech” is simply a shortened version of “He is neither obliged to attend the meeting nor is he obliged to give the speech”.

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Even then, I don’t think we can use the correlative conjunctions as you say. See the pair below:

  1. He is not obliged to attend the meeting.
  2. He is not inclined to deliver the speech.
  • He is neither obliged to attend the meeting nor inclined to deliver the speech.

(By the way, to me, ‘give a speech’ and ‘give a lecture’ are collocational. So is, ‘deliver a speech/lecture’.)

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Whew!
I wouldn’t use the neither/nor construction here. It requires too much thought.

I would simply go with “He is not obliged to attend the meeting or to give a speech.”

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We could take it even a step further:

He is not required to attend or speak at the meeting.

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Thanks @Torsten @Arinker and @Anglophile for your contribution.

I was wondering if it is correct to use neither when you have more than two options:
e.g. He is neither obliged to attend the meeting nor to give the speech nor to participate in the discussion.
If the above example is not correct, (which I am assuming, it is not because its sounds very unnatural for me), how would you rephrase it without changing the meaning of the sentence.

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Here is my version:

He is not required to attend the meeting, nor to make a speech or participate in the discussion.

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@Torsten Is this version correct?
He is neither obliged to attend the meeting nor to give the speech OR to participate in the discussion.

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It’s certainly grammatically correct. The question is what it sounds like within a text.

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I would say thus: He is obliged neither to attend the meeting nor to give the speech or to participate in the discussion.
(As you suspect, more than two sentences are not combined with a correlative conjunction; in this case the use of ‘or’ after nor in neither … nor is acceptable)

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I agree with this version. For me it’s not a grammatical point of view, but rather semantic, if I may express myself that way.
Neither will emphasize the phrase it stands right before. The example in question is not about being obliged or something else, it is about attending the meeting and delivering the speech. Therefore, if you put neither in front of obliged, it requires another option in the sentence which simply isn’t there. For exmple, “I was neither obliged nor asked to do something”. Whereas, when you put neither before “to attend” it makes more sense because you have two things there, “attend” and “deliver”. Neither/nor is always used in reference to two or more things. Neither (1)obliged nor (2)___. Neither (1)attend nor (2)deliver. As you can see, in the first example something is missing and therefore makes the sentence incomplete.

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