To Josephine Baker, Paris was her home long before it was fashionable

Dear Jeet,

I am really happy to see your in depth analysis of the question. It shows how committed you are to learning the concepts and acing GMAT.

Let’s discuss the analysis presented by you.

Your Meaning analysis: Please contrast the meanings presented in the highlighted portions:
Long before a fashion to be an expatriate arrived, Josephine baker lived in paris(Which was her native place).
During WW2 she lived in France as a performer and an intelligence agent for the resistance.

Intended meaning of the author:

This sentence starts off by telling us about a person called Josephine Baker. It says that she made Paris her home. When did she make Paris her home? She did so long before it became stylish to live as an emigrant. The author then goes on to give us additional information about Josephine Baker. We get to know that she lived in France throughout the Second World War. She lived there as an artist and as an intelligence agent for an agency called The Resistance.

Gap between your meaning analysis and the intended meaning of the author:

The point that you have missed is that Josephine baker wasn’t from Paris. Therefore, Paris couldn’t have been her native place. How do we know this? We know this because the author gives us enough context to establish the same. Look at how author gives us information about Josephine Baker. She considered Paris her home way before it was fashionable to be an emigrant.
Now how do you think the two pieces of facts (color-coded above) relate to each other? Why is the author saying that Paris was home to Josephine before it was fashionable to live outside one’s own country (i.e. as an expatriate)?

Let’s move on to analyzing the sentence structure break-up and the error-analysis presented by you:

cl1: To Josephine Baker, Paris was her home long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate,and
cl2: She remained in France during the Second World War as a performer and an intelligence agent for the Resistance

This is how I would break the sentence in to various clauses:

• To Josephine Baker, Paris was her home
o long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate,
• and she remained in France during the Second World War
o as a performer and an intelligence agent for the Resistance.

So in all there are three clauses in the sentence above. The subject verb pairs are highlighted appropriately. The subject of the second clause is “it”. Now you have mentioned in your error analysis that “it” here lacks a referent. Let me ask you a question here : Does “it” always refer to something? For example, in the sentence It is raining, does “it” refer to anything in particular? The answer is no! The “it” here is what we call a dummy or placeholder “it” and one should not look for a referent for a dummy “it”. Let’s take a look at a couple of more sentences to where the dummy “it” has been used:

1. It is wise to invest your money in mutual fund.
2. Do you think it is important that we keep our promises?

As you can see, in both the sentences, “it” does not refer to anything in particular.

The second error, as hinted by you as well, is that here both the clauses can be made more structurally parallel. Ideally the sentence should have Josephine as the subject of the first clause and not Paris, since we are talking about her in both the clauses. In other words, Josephine is the focus of the sentence and not Paris.

Moving on, you have marked choice C as the correct answer; however, choice C is extremely awkward in its structure and cannot be a contender for the correct choice. There is no reason for us to write this:…long before to be an expatriate was fashionable

Look at choices C and D from fresh eyes. You now know that “it” acts as a dummy “it” in the original sentence and choice D. Accordingly, which choice would you prefer structurally? To help you think in this direction, I would like you to consider the following two sentences.

Which one would you prefer?

1. Long before to be an actor was fashionable, he started acting.
2. Long before it was fashionable to be an actor, he started acting.

Your analysis of other choices is OK, except at places where you have listed the lack of an antecedent for “it” as an error. Accordingly, choice D has no error. Also, the word “being” as used in choice E is not appreciated by the GMAT. To check wheer the use of "being" is considered correct by the GMAC, please refer to our article here: https://e-gmat.com/blogs/?p=3544

Hope the above discussion helps!

Regards,

Neeti.