In three centuries—from 1050 to 1350—several million tons of stone wer

A.

A. is wordy, but there's nothing wrong grammatically.

B. 'might' serves no purpose. they has no clear antecedent and can even refer to tons of stone.

C. 'so as ... might..' 'so as' is unidiomatic. 'might' serves no purpose and makes the passage wordy.
'They' has no clear antecedent.

D. 'There could be built'. Use of there and passive voice are awkward.

E. 'They' has no clear antecedent.

they does not have any proper antecedent here... hence left with options A and D..
could be built is awkward in D..
A has no issues..

I got the question right. But it was more of a calculated guess. Can someone explain why D is wrong?

"there could be built sounds correct"

+1 A

"they" doesn't have antecedent.
D changes the meaning. It seems that the churches were built in where the stones were.

Well, "could be built" is passive form and it is parallel to "were quarried". I don't understand why this is wrong. Can someone explain, please?

As mentioned, "could be built" is awkward because the nouns (eighty cathedrals, etc.) are AFTER the verb.

One could have written "... eighty cathedrals could be built..." but not "... could be built eighty cathedrals..."

THERE COULD BE DONE SOMETHING is not idiomatic.

options B,C,D,E are showing uncertain condition. but from the meaning of the question we can figure out that the stones were used to build all these buildings.

so,
A only.

what is the problem with option D ?
'there' is refer to place !?

mkumar26, D is one of those choices that seems completely logical but just doesn't follow the conventions of English. Generally, we put the subject before the verb unless there's an important reason not to. That would give us "so that eighty cathedrals, five hundred large churches, and some tens of thousands of parish churches could be built."

Also, "there" in this case wouldn't normally be read as referring to a place. It would read as an introductory subject for the clause, as in "There are too many exclamation marks in this sentence!!!!" That doesn't really change the grammar too much, but we'd still only use a subject-last construction like this if we were trying to look very old-fashioned, as in this famous quote from the King James Bible: "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour . . . "

D is wrong because there refers to France. Therefore, if you replace there with France the sentence becomes more awkward.
Hence A is the answer.
Correct me if my explanation is wrong.

Sent from my AO5510 using Tapatalk

Well, when we use "there" to refer to a place, we can't just swap in that place name to test it. When used in this way (as in, "I built the tower there."), the word "there" is not a pronoun but an adverb! The exact words to replace it would depend on context:

I bought a ticket to France because I've never been there.
Translation: I bought a ticket to France because I've never been to France.

I went to France because there are many beautiful cathedrals there.
Translation: I went to France because there are many beautiful cathedrals in France.

But as I said in my previous post, "there" should probably not be read as referring to France at all!

But option A ends with "some tens of" is correct? Or should not it have been - "few tens of"?

Hi angarg, some is used as approximately here.

Hi Ashish,

But some cannot be used for countable things. Few would have been correct here per my knowledge.

What's your take?

Thanks!

Yes, and that's the reason I mentioned that some is just used as approximately here (rather than the literal differentiation between some and few).

For example, which one would you choose:
(i) Some 5 friends came to my birthday.
(ii) Few 5 friends came to my birthday.

Clearly (ii) is not correct.

A few notes on "some" here:

*The usage in A is a somewhat rare idiom that is meant to emphasize a particularly large or impressive number (in inexact terms). "Some 15,000 people lined the streets for his funeral." It's not likely that you will encounter this much, and I wouldn't recommend using it in your own writing unless you are very familiar with the contexts in which it is used. I don't believe I've ever had occasion to use it myself! (The infinite complexity of language certainly keeps SC from running out of tricks, eh?)

*"Some" is used for countable things all the time! It is one of the "SANAM" pronouns (Some, Any, None, All, More/Most) that take their singular/plural nature from the nouns they describe.

*"Some" and "few" are completely different quantity words that don't have much to do with each other. There's no need to set them up as a binary choice. "Some" refers to any unspecified amount > 0. It doesn't have to refer to a small number. For instance, some people have two eyes! "Few" specifically refers to a small number (although notions of what a small number is will vary according to context and opinion), and it only applies to countable nouns.