Kritesh
In order to document their contribution to the field of structural engineering, the curators at the university’s art museum organized a comprehensive exhibition of the work of leading Swiss designers, including photographs, diagrams, and models of their most famous bridges and buildings.A. In order to document their contribution to the field of structural engineering, the curators at the university’s art museum organized a comprehensive exhibition of the work of leading Swiss designers, including photographs, diagrams, and models of their most famous bridges and buildings.
B. In order to document the contribution of the Swiss to the field of structural engineering, the curators at the university’s art museum organized a comprehensive exhibition of the work of leading Swiss designers, including photographs, diagrams, and models of their most famous bridges and buildings.
C. In order to document the contribution of the Swiss to the field of structural engineering, the curators at the university’s art museum organized a comprehensive exhibition of the work of leading Swiss designers, including photographs, diagrams, and models of its most famous bridges and buildings.
D. In order to document their contribution to the structural engineering field, a comprehensive exhibition was organized by the curators at the university’s art museum of their photographs, diagrams, and models of the most famous bridges and buildings of leading Swiss designers.
E. The curators at the university’s art museum, in order to document their contribution to the field, organized a comprehensive exhibition of the work of leading Swiss designers, including photographs, diagrams, and models of their most famous bridges and buildings.
KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:
B
Pronouns must refer clearly to the nouns they replace. Here, the antecedent for the pronoun
their in the opening phrase is ambiguous. Are the curators documenting their own contribution or the contribution of the leading Swiss designers? Based on the overall meaning of the sentence,
their should refer to the designers, not to the curators, so the correct choice must make that clear. Eliminate (E), which retains the ambiguous pronoun
their.
(C) resolves the problem with
their in the opening phrase, but then uses
its in place of
their at the end of the sentence. (D) makes the sentence extremely awkward by switching the active verb
organized to the passive verb
was organized. This also makes
their even more ambiguous, since it should now technically refer to the exhibition. (B) resolves the ambiguity by replacing
their contribution to the field with
the contribution of the Swiss to the field, so it could be the correct choice.