Like many others of his generation of Native American leaders, Joseph

Hi All,
Like many others of his generation of Native American leaders, Joseph Brant lived in two worlds; born into an Iroquois community and instructed in traditional Iroquois ways, he also received an education from English-speaking teachers.



This sentence presents comparison. The entities that have been compared in this sentence are “many other leaders” and “Joseph Brant”. Per the comparison rule, “like” must be followed a “noun” and “as” must be followed by a “clause”.

Giving a break to the sentence solution, I would discuss a little bit about the usage of “like” and “as” in comparison sentences. Let’s take these examples.
1. Tina dances like her sister.
2. Tina dances as her sister does.
Structure wise, both these sentences are correct. In sentence 1, “like” is followed by noun “sister” and in sentence 2, “as” is followed by clause “her sister does”. If you examine the sentence closely, you will see that there is no difference in the meaning of the both the sentences. Hence, when used correctly for comparison, sentences with “like” and “as” have almost the same meaning. Again on closer examination, you will notice that in both the sentences, Tina has been compared to her sister because she “dances” like her. The similarity is in the manner of dancing, an action. Hence, “like” can compare both “noun” and “actions” but “like” is ALWAYS followed by a NOUN, and never be a clause.

Coming back to the error analysis, the sentence presents the correct comparison between Brant and the other leaders of his generation. Also, semicolon has been correctly used to join two independent sentences. The sentence written after the semicolon perfectly stands on its own. The sentence begins with two verb-ed modifiers “born” and “instructed” that correctly modify the subject of the main clause “he”. And, from the first sentence (before the semicolon) we know that “he” refers to “Joseph Brant”. This sentence is correct as is.

POE

Choice A: Correct for the reasons stated above.

Choice B: Like many others of his generation of Native American leaders, living in two worlds, Joseph Brant was. Incorrect. The verb-ibg modifier “living” is written between two commas. This makes it ambiguous that who it should refer to – many other leaders lived in two worlds or Joseph Brant lived in two worlds. This ambiguity makes this choice incorrect.

Choice C: Like many another of his generation of Native American leaders, Joseph Brant, living in two worlds, was. Incorrect. “many another” is a wrong phrase to use here. Again, verb-ing modifier “living” is preceded by a comma. This means that it should modify the preceding clause. But there is no clause before it.

Choice D: As with many others of his generation of Native American leaders, living in two worlds, Joseph Brant was. Incorrect. This choice repeats the same error of verb-ing modifier “living” as in choice B. Also, in comparison “as” must be followed by a clause. Here “as” is followed a prepositional phrase and not a clause.

Choice E: As with many another of his generation of Native American leaders, Joseph Brant lived in two worlds: Incorrect. This choice repeats the same “as” error as in choice D and the “many another” phrase error as in choice C.



1. In comparison sentences, "like" must be followed by "noun" and "as" must be followed by "clause".
2. Modifiers must clearly modify the entity that are meant to modify

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha