Some Grammical Questions, THX.

QuantMech
Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:42:02 +0000

waht, are you a native English speaker? Some of these questions are much easier for native speakers than for non-native speakers.

In the first question, “the cold earth cracks” is a clause with subject and verb. “By” is a preposition, which has an object that is a noun (or noun equivalent, such as a gerund), but which is not followed by a full clause. In contrast, “when” is a subordinating conjunction, so it is followed by a clause. That is why A does not work. B would work as far as this explanation goes, but then “by the cold earth cracking” would not be parallel with the structure “and the cracks fill with water.” Also, it should really be “by the cold earth’s cracking.”

In the next example, you have “The director valued the actor not so much for his [noun describing characteristic],” so to have parallel structures, it should be followed by another noun structure. Choice A contains a full clause. Personally, I think E is better than B (unless I am somehow reading it wrong–so no help from me on that!), but perhaps it’s not liked because “passionate” and “with passion” have slightly different shades of meaning?

The one about iced tea is actually funny. You need to know that the late-nineteenth century means the late 1800’s. If “When” is used, the sentence essentially means that the appearance of iced tea in the cookbooks in the late 1800’s delayed the general popularity of the drink. If that happened, those must have been some truly awful recipes! The word that is intended instead of “When” is “Although.” The correct sentence means that the recipes had appeared earlier, but the drink did not become popular until it was served at the World’s Fair.

The problem with the last one is also an issue of parallel structures. The item that follows “than” should be either a territory (or group of nations) or an area. In case B, what follows the “than” is “combining.” This creates a non-parallel structure, because “combining” is an action and neither a territory nor an area. Similarly, E starts with “if” which introduces a clause expressing contingency, and again “if” is neither a territory nor an area. Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Portugal combined is a territory (interpreted as a region on a map), though it is not a territory in the colonial historical sense of the term.