Equally at ease scrambling up the craggiest and treacherous mountain

I had chosen D, missing out on the Singular/plural forms! But the above explanation was very insightful, thank you pghai!!!

IMO E..

1. Cut out the fluff in between, i.e. - "most treacherous mountain landscapes";
2. See the usage of the idiom "as..as.."
3. Options ending with 'goats' can't be correct since the non-underlined part refers to the singular 'sheep'; also, here, notice the use of the determiner "the", which should be repeated at both points to construct correct parallelism.

And there you go - option E

I at first crossed off answers until I was reading E and then could not get passed the awkward wording in the middle of the sentence.

"E - As comfortable scrambling up the craggiest, most treacherous mountain landscapes as perching on ready-made barnyard knolls, the goat is"

Is this portion I've bolded really worded correctly? It completely threw me off and I opted to select D as my second best. Anyone else experience this?

Equally at ease scrambling up the craggiest and treacherous mountain landscapes as perching on a ready-made barnyard knoll; the goat is considerably more adaptable than its cousin, the sheep.

The use of a semi-colon would imply that the "Equally at ease...barnyard knoll" is an independant clause. There is no subject, so A is incorrect and we should realise that it is a modifier for the noun "goat" or noun phrase "the goat"

Once we realise this and spot that the end of the sentence is singular "its cousin" not "their cousin"

Modifier, + the/a goat is considerably more adaptable than its cousin, the sheep

The only answer choice avaliable is E

Thanks Valerun, its clear now. I had been focusing on what I perceived as awkward wording and had missed the very different endings to the underlined portion. Definitely making a note to look again for additional differences if I get tripped up on one segment.

Hi,

Could someone help to explain, I have two questions about this:

1, "Comfortable" is used to modify the verbs "scramble up" and "perch", right? So why it should not be in adverb form instead? I mean, what is wrong with "As comfortably scrambling up the craggiest, most treacherous mountain landscapes as perching on..."? I think I am misunderstanding something here

2, If we want to use "Equally at ease" to make this comparison, so how the sentence should be?

Thanks for your help

1. First, "scrambling up" and "perching" are not verbs, but gerunds. Moroever, the adjective "comfortable" does not modify these gerunds but the "the goat". Consider the following simple example:

I am comfortable travelling by train.

The adjective "comfortable" modifies "I", not "travelling by trains".

2. Equally at ease (with) scrambling up the craggiest, most treacherous mountain landscapes AND (with) perching on ready-made barnyard knolls, the goat is....

The simple structure to understand would be:
I am equally at ease with X AND Y.

Shouldn't there be a "and" between craggiest and most treacherous?

It is stylistically alright not to use "and" between two adjectives - "the tall, dark man", " the sweet, little child" are both alright.

Official Explanation:

This sentence begins by describing the versatility of goats: they are just as comfortable in treacherous mountain landscapes as on more pastoral grounds, leading to the more general claim that goats are more adaptable than sheep.

(A) Craggiest, a superlative that compares the given landscapes to others, does not make sense in parallel to treacherous, an adjective that does not. The portion of this choice preceding the semicolon is a fragment, not a complete sentence as required.

(B) In the construction as comfortable scrambling as to perch, scrambling and to perch should be parallel but are not. In addition, this sentence is a run-on: if the intervening modifier (as comfortable…knolls) is eliminated, the resulting sentence reads: The goat it is more adaptable. A sentence cannot have two subjects without a conjunction in between.

(C) Craggiest, a superlative that compares the given landscapes to others, does not make sense in parallel to treacherous, an adjective that does not. In addition, the plural noun goats does not match with the singular pronoun its. The sheep cannot be its own cousin, so the pronoun its has no acceptable antecedent.

(D) The plural noun goats does not match with the singular pronoun its. The sheep cannot be its own cousin, so the pronoun its has no acceptable antecedent.

(E) CORRECT. The singular noun the goat serves as a proper antecedent for the pronoun its. The superlatives craggiest and most treacherous, both of which compare the given landscapes to others, make sense in parallel. Scrambling and perching are also parallel.

Tag already fixed

Thank you