Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Go right ahead, jdcruz! Those practice tests are meant for everybody who needs them or can find use for them. And thanks for your best wishes; I greatly appreciate it.I would write the final sentence as ''And thanks for your best wishes; I greatly appreciate them.'' Is that not the perfect way of matching a pronoun with its noun atecedent, Sir?
Math does suck when you look at it negatively, bur90, but it could be truly fascinating and fun when viewed with an open, welcoming mind. For starters, read my essay "The grammar of numbers and time" that's posted on the Forum, then follow it up with "The genesis of the numbers 1 to 9," also posted in the Forum. Do tell me what you think when you're through reading them.Can the prepositions ''on'' and ''in'' safely be used interchangeably as in phrases ''posted on the Forum'' and ''posted in the Forum.'' I've been confounded with the maze for quite some time, and I think it's the correct time I asked it now you've used them the prepositions that way in your posting.
Mwita is absolutely correct in saying that the construction in question is an inverted sentence. She also shows why it is so and clearly explains the typical inverted sentence structure. Her answer, however, doesn’t address the question of why the correct answer could only be (E) “lie the clauses that make us liable for any expenses that,” and not (D) “lie the clauses that make us liable for any expenses which.” I will therefore elaborate on her analysis.The second sentence in the fifth paragraph looks somewhat fragmented, as nowhere in it one can locate the predicate for that noun clause ''That true subject is the...'' At the first blush, of course, I thought 'that' was acting as a determiner for the noun phrase 'true subject,' but later realized it did not qualify to be a demonstrative adjective inasmuch as it was only being mentioned for the first time in the paragraph.
As we will recall, an inverted sentence is one that deliberately departs from the normal declarative form. In this particular case, we have this rather structurally unwieldy sentence: “The clauses that make us liable for any expenses that result from civil unrest lie in the fine print at the end of the document.” We can see that although that sentence is grammatically correct, its bad syntax makes it clunky and difficult to comprehend.
In contrast, the form of inversion presented in the test puts the prepositional phrase “in the fine print at the end of the document” at the beginning of the sentence, and then positions the intransitive verb “lie” ahead of its subject “the clauses.” This inverted sentence is the result: “In the fine print at the end of the document lie the clauses that make us liable for any expenses that result from civil unrest.”
As we can see, inversion has made the sentence not only much more readable but also highly emphatic. This improvement in syntax comes at a price, though. When we look at the inverted sentence, it strongly appears that the subject of the verb “lie” is the singular noun “document”—not the plural “clauses”—so the reader is apt to be tempted to correct that verb to the singular form “lies.”
When constructing inverted sentences, it is therefore crucial to identify its true subject correctly. That true subject is the subject of the main clause of the inverted sentence, and the verb should agree with the number of that subject, not with that of the noun that intervenes or comes before it. Indeed, the singular verb form “lies” for the plural “clauses” is what makes (C) “lies the clauses that make us liable for any expenses that” incorrect.
That, however, still leaves as possible correct answers either (D) “lie the clauses that make us liable for any expenses which” and (E) “lie the clauses that make us liable for any expenses that.” So what is it that makes E the only correct answer?
It’s the use in E of the relative pronoun “that” as opposed to the use in D of the relative pronoun “which.” Remember now that in American English, “that” is used when the relative clause is restrictive or indispensable to the meaning of the sentence, and “which” (preceded by a comma) is used when the relative clause is nonrestrictive or not absolutely necessary to that meaning. In the inverted sentence in question here, the relative clause “that result from civil unrest” is clearly a restrictive relative clause, one strongly bound semantically to the noun “expenses” in that sentence.
I had answered B!Are those found in this Forum!
Can you suggest high-quality English proficiency tests then?
