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Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.

(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house

(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses

(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house

(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses

(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their styles vary among women and houses


It's A. In C they refers to Ndebele women
in A => to their geometrical symmetries embellished in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
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Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.

(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house

(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses

(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house

(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses

(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their styles vary among women and houses


I say A.

DE out: uses "with" to refer to women, should be "whose"
B. changes the meaning of the sentence. varying among women and houses? sounds like it varies between only women and houses. This changes the meaning of the original sentence.

C. Use of they is ambigious women or the murals??? also "and they are in styles" seems ungrammatic.
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I would go with A

surely D & E are out of the picture

B is wrong
and their style varies "among" women and houses

C is wrong
and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house

what does "they" refer to?
here we are talking abt art.. and definitely "they" cannot refer to art
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A sounds awkward to me. If we remove the other 2 modifiers and leave the sentence, it will end up in sentence fragmentation.

Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women,......in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.
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Natia
503. Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.
(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses
(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house
(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses
(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries

A is the only option that makes sense.

Eliminate D/E due to the clause starting with "with murals"

B and C are both run-on sentences. Especially C...
"Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses"

The clause their geometrical symmetries is an independent clause and can't be connected by just a comma.
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hi.
Can you help me to understand the following,

Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.

Shouldn't it be?
.... xs are colored, ys are embellished....
Where is the second BE?
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HI mikeCoolBoy
Thanx for your effort.
Can you answer, is it ok to omit TO BE from the passive? I agree that it's ok to omit the verb, but here we have to be+PII
Don't you think that this action could make the sentence ambiguous? Looks like active voice.
...their geometrical symmetries embellished
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embellish is a transitive verb, so you need a direct object if you want to use the active voice. Thus I don't see the ambiguity that you mentioned.
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the pronoun WHOSE tells you that all the analogies must be parallel and structured.
oNLY A seems to fit the bill...i dont see how can the remaining options even come close....(well,i think the same about questions which i get wrong :-()
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503. Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.
(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house - Correct
(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses - Among houses and women
(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house - would have been a competitor if it read and their style
(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses - As B
(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries - incomplete
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Natia
503. Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.
(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses
(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house
(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses
(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries

D and E wrong, should start with "whose"
C is wrong, it is not clear what "they" is referring to.
B is also wrong, because of the use of "among women and houses".
A is correct, because "their geometrical..." until the end modifies the murals. When in B and C there is an effort to create an artificial parallelism that changes the meaning of the original sentence.
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(A)

(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses
(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house
(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses
(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries
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I think that A is the correct answer.
C is awkward, wordy. "They" refers to geometrical symmetries so "they" could be eliminated to have a more concise sentence.
In option A, "their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house" is an absolute phrase.

https://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/absoluteterm.htm

Definition:
A group of words that modifies an independent clause as a whole.

An absolute is made up of a noun and its modifiers. It may precede, follow, or interrupt the main clause:
Example:
Their slender bodies sleek and black against the orange sky, the storks circled high above us.
The storks circled high above us, their slender bodies sleek and black against the orange sky.
The storks, their slender bodies sleek and black against the orange sky, circled high above us.
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selfAnnihilation
Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.
(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses
(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house
(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses
(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their styles vary among women and houses

Didn't quite understand how is the OA correct.

Hii selfannihilation.
The question involves the topic Absolute Phrases.
For more on how to tackle Absolute Phrases, visit: with-surface-temperatures-estimated-at-minus-230-degrees-143219.html

Before proceeding into the question, please note that two independent clause can't co-exist just by a mere separation of a "comma". To join two ICs, we need to have a conjunction word and that the absolute phrases can't stand alone.

A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
The green shaded portion correctly describes the blue shaded portion, is an absolute phrase and can't stand alone. The best technique is to ask \(HOW\) on the termination of the last IC and if the next clause answers your question exactly in its own words, then that clause is the absolute phrase and is the answer.
In this case, the last clause describes HOW murals were brilliantly coloured by explaining that their geometrical symmetries were embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.

All other choices are disasters in that they either have ambiguity issue or IC issue. Here conjunction words would have been really helpful.

If you need more explanations how I eliminated the rest of others, do let me know. I will try my best.
Hope that helps.
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Margaret Courtney-Clarke has traveled to remote dwellings in the Transvaal to photograph the art of Ndebele women, whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house.
(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house
(B) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and their style is varying among women and houses
(C) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries are embellished with old and new iconography, and they are in styles that vary from woman to woman and house to house
(D) with murals brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their style varies among women and houses
(E) with murals that are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old and new iconography, and their styles vary among women and houses

my 2 cents here :
women are not with murals -> eliminate D and E. Among A,B and C . In C 'they' is ambiguous -> it refer to geometrical symmteries or mural -> Eliminated.
In B , their is repetitive , that's an error. Eliminated. A wins.
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Thanks MichaelS for the great explanation.

However can you explain how the and part from (A) is right.

(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house

does it not break the construction. will it not make better sense if we remove the "AND"

(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old new iconography in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house

Thanks.
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seabhi
Thanks MichaelS for the great explanation.

However can you explain how the and part from (A) is right.

(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old new iconography and in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house

does it not break the construction. will it not make better sense if we remove the "AND"

(A) whose murals are brilliantly colored, their geometrical symmetries embellished with old new iconography in a style that varies from woman to woman and house to house

Thanks.

Let me express what I consider about that AND part.
In original choice "in a style" is modifying GEOMETRICAL SYMMETRIES, but in choice proposed by you "in a style" is modifying iconography.
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