rphardu wrote:
Stymieing the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, the reason for the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not only due to gale winds that favored the British but also the sacrificing of eight war ships as “fireships,” vessels filled with pitch, brimstone, gunpowder, and tar and sent downwind toward the closely-anchored Spanish fleet.
A.Stymieing the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, the reason for the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not only due to gale winds that favored the British but also the sacrificing
B.The defeat of the Spanish Armada, which stymied the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, was not only due to gale winds that favored the British but also the sacrificing
C.The defeat of the Spanish Armada, which stymied the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, was not only due to gale winds that favored the British but also due to the sacrificing
D.Stymieing the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, the reason for the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not only gale winds that favored the British but also the sacrifice
E.Stymieing the Armada’s plans to meet up with the Duke of Parma’s army off the coast of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, the defeat of the Spanish Armada was due not only to gale winds that favored the British but also to the sacrifice
JusTLucK04 wrote:
Hello Mike,
Here the sacrifice vs Sacrificing: Proper Noun Usage Vs Action noun usage(Gerund) is the reason for later being wrong..I dont get it..Please post your expert comments or kindly share the
magoosh link which guides us on such a usage
Thank You
Dear
JusTLucK04,
I'm happy to respond.
This is hard, because there isn't any universal "rule" for this. The construction of "
the sacrifice of" sounds 100% perfectly natural, and "
the sacrificing of" sounds unutterably awkward and incorrect. As a very vague rule, I would say --- if the gerund makes the word
longer, then there's less of a reason to use it. With many nouns, say "
identification," the noun form is a much longer word than the gerund, "
identifying," so the gerund might make the sentence more concise and direct. This is just a vague general guideline. It very much depends on the individual words --- I have never heard "
the sacrificing of" used in a correct English sentence.
The deeper answer, though, is you have to read. Read, read, read. That's the only way you will develop this deep sense of what "sounds natural." See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-reading-list/Does this make sense?
Mike
To add to "C" -- isn't "the sacrificing of" considered a complex gerund? Aren't complex gerunds parallel to action nouns, which in this case, is "gale winds"?