daagh wrote:
chetan Hi
Thank you for your instant response. On the points, which seem to have some disagreement-
1, Admittedly, the pronoun ‘them’ is vulnerable to ambiguity in the underlined portion. Well, that should be sufficient cause to dump it, even though in an another place, the same pronoun may mean definitely the artifacts. The idea on the D-day is to quickly reach the correct choice, rather than getting stuck unduly on some factor; but more importantly, the ambiguity was only an additional point.
Coming to the use of idiom, it is my perception that ‘due to’ is used to modify a noun, ‘the decay’ as in this case and it rightly replaces the idiom “caused by”
IMO, ‘because of’ is used when a verb precedes it and therefore, the idiom modifies the verb. In the context, there is only a decay that is due to or caused by climatic conditions; Let me keep my fingers crossed until the OA is out; In any case, since you seem to have different ideas, may I have privilege of asking you what your call is
Hi daagh,
we both have homed on to two final choices as B and D..
I have gone with B for following reasons..
a) I think 'them is correctly referring back to artifacts as artifacts are the object here and archeologists are the subject here and
'them' should be referring to object, when we have two nouns to refer to and the meaning conveys to that end.b) shielding ... and saving.. are basically effects of the melting ice fails to keep them undetected, so both shielding and saving should be parallel, which is missing in D..
c) D omits them in one clause but keeps it in the second part, so it is not following parallelism.
d) i believe
decay is due to changing climatic conditions would have been correct..
But again as you have said, we all have our own perceptions depending on the experiences with the type of Qs we have had earlier. and with so much of material floating around, difficult to home on to something that has not been clearly spelt out by the official GMAC. lets wait for OA. if otherwise, it will teach a new thing.