NikuHBS wrote:
I would love to disagree with you on this one. “The prison” does indeed refer to a specific prison that should (must) have been talked about
When I wrote this:
IanStewart wrote:
they talk about "the prison" before any particular prison has been mentioned.
the second half of that sentence was important. There would be nothing wrong with an SC answer that said something like:
Ali enjoyed his stay at the hotel.There would be an issue, though, with a sentence like this:
Ali enjoyed his stay at the hotel; travellers can still visit the Excelsior.It now becomes a question: is "the hotel" "the Excelsior", or is "the hotel" some hotel mentioned in a previous sentence that we're not able to read? If "the hotel" is indeed "the Excelsior", it then becomes a mystery why the sentence isn't phrased this way:
Ali enjoyed his stay at the Excelsior; travellers can still visit the hotel.If "the hotel" refers to some other hotel mentioned earlier, it then becomes a mystery why these two clauses are joined by a semicolon, because if "the hotel" is not "the Excelsior", the two clauses have almost nothing to do with each other. Semicolons and periods can't be used interchangeably; a semicolon is only appropriate (in this kind of usage) when two sentences enjoy such a strong logical dependence that there's a risk that using a period might make that dependence obscure.
That's what distinguishes the question in this thread from the official question, about "these storms", that you link to. In that official question, no specific storms are mentioned elsewhere, so those sentences are similar to the first sentence above: "Ali enjoyed his stay at the hotel." That sentence is fine. In the question in this thread, though, a specific prison is mentioned later in the sentence: Alcatraz. If, in answers A or E, that's the same "prison" mentioned in the first half of the sentence, why is it not named in the first half of the sentence? And if it's a different prison, why are these two clauses joined by a semicolon? I can't even tell how to interpret the sentences in A or E (which is an issue all on its own), but no matter how you interpret them, they're problematic. Answer D, though, resolves those issues.
I agree with you about pronouns and possessive nouns. I think some SC books teach some grammar "rules" that don't actually exist. English is a flexible language, and a lot of the "rules" people imagine exist have many exceptions, which is why I don't like the "learn a lot of rules, then try to figure out how to apply them" approach many books take to SC.