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Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers
terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say of as incapable to protect them from organized crime.
• Clause 1: Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers
terrorizing the region and against the government• Clause 2:
that• Clause 3:
residents say• Cont. of Clause 2:
of as incapable to protect them from organized crime.
Many Mexican villagers have started armed revolution against:
a. local drug traffickers who have terrorized the region.
b. the government who the people think is not capable of protecting them.
Error Analysis• Clause 1: Residents of several Mexican villages have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers
terrorizing the region and against the government• Clause 2:
that• Clause 3:
residents say• Cont. of Clause 2:
of as incapable to protect them from organized crime.
Error 1 – Relative Pronoun “that” starts a dependent clause. It acts as a subject and stands for “the government”. However, there is no verb for this subject. This leads to fragment error.
Error 2 – “to protect” is not the correct expression here. The sentence wants to convey that the government did not have the ability. Hence, the correct expression here should be “of protecting”. Study the usage of “capable of” in the following correct official sentence:
Quote:
Even though many of her colleagues were convinced that genes were relatively simple and static, Barbara McClintock adhered to her own more complicated ideas about how genes might operate, and in 1983, at the age of 81, was awarded a Nobel Prize for her discovery that the genes in corn are capable of moving from one chromosomal site to another.
PoEA. terrorizing the region and against the government that residents say
of as incapable
to protect:
Incorrect for the reasons stated above.
B. terrorizing the region and the government that residents say to be incapable to protect:
Incorrect. Error 1 – Per this choice, the list is no longer clear. In the absence of “against” before the second element “the government”, the sentence may be construed to mean the following:
The villagers have started armed revolution against traffickers who have terrorized:
a. the region
b. the government.
This is certainly not the intended meaning of the sentence. Thus to avoid ambiguity in meaning, we need to repeat “against” before “the government” the way we have it before “local drug traffickers”.
Error 2 – Same fragment error as in Choice A.
Error 3 – Same expression error as in Choice A.
C. who have terrorized the region and
the government who residents say
it is incapable
to protect:
Incorrect.Error 1 – Same illogical parallelism error as in Choice B.
Error 2 – Presence of pronoun “it” is incorrect because relative pronoun “who” is already present in the sentence that stands for “the government”.
Error 3 – Same expression error as in Choice A.
D. who have terrorized the region and against the government that residents say is incapable of protecting:
Correct AnswerCorrect. Verb “is” is the verb for the relative pronoun subject “that”.
E. that terrorized the region and against the government that residents say incapable of protecting:
Incorrect. Error 1 – Local drug traffickers are people. Hence we should use relative pronoun “who” for them and not “that”.
Error 2 – Same fragment error as in Choice A.
1. In cases in which the omission of common words before the entities may lead to ambiguity in meaning, repeat the common words before all the entities so that the conveyed meaning is logical.
2. Every subject must have a verb to form a clause.
3. Use correct expressions to convey the correct meaning.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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