Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Concepts tested here: Tenses + Pronouns + Meaning

• The past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past"; further, if the sentence contains more than two actions in the past, the past perfect tense will be used to refer to all but the latest action.
• One of the acceptable usages of the placeholder pronoun “it” is that it can refer to a that/who/whether clause.

A: The sentence formed by this answer choice incorrectly uses the simple past tense verbs “occupied”, "fortified", and “won” to refer to the earlier of multiple actions that concluded in the past-- King Alfred occupying and fortifying London, King Alfred not being able to win the loyalty of its citizens, and the Danes using this weakness to their advantage in 893; please remember, the past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past"; further, if the sentence contains more than two actions in the past, the past perfect tense will be used to refer to all but the latest action.

B: Correct. This answer choice correctly uses the past perfect tense verbs "had occupied", "had...fortified", and "had won" to refer to the earlier of multiple actions that concluded in the past-- King Alfred occupying and fortifying London, King Alfred not being able to win the loyalty of its citizens, and the Danes using this weakness to their advantage in 893. Further, Option B correctly uses the pronoun “it” to refer to only one referent, “this weakness”.

C: The sentence formed by this answer choice incorrectly uses the simple past tense verbs “occupied”, "fortified", and “won” to refer to the earlier of multiple actions that concluded in the past-- King Alfred occupying and fortifying London, King Alfred not being able to win the loyalty of its citizens, and the Danes using this weakness to their advantage in 893; please remember, the past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past"; further, if the sentence contains more than two actions in the past, the past perfect tense will be used to refer to all but the latest action. Further, Option C incorrectly uses the pronoun “it” as both a placeholder pronoun and to refer to the noun “this weakness”; please remember, a pronoun can only have one referent in a sentence.

D: The sentence formed by this answer choice incorrectly uses the simple past tense verbs “occupied”, "fortified", and “won” to refer to the earlier of multiple actions that concluded in the past-- King Alfred occupying and fortifying London, King Alfred not being able to win the loyalty of its citizens, and the Danes using this weakness to their advantage in 893; please remember, the past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past"; further, if the sentence contains more than two actions in the past, the past perfect tense will be used to refer to all but the latest action. Further, Option D incorrectly uses the pronoun “it” as both a placeholder pronoun and to refer to the noun “this weakness”; please remember, a pronoun can only have one referent in a sentence.

E: The sentence formed by this answer choice incorrectly uses the simple past tense verb “won” to refer to the earlier of multiple actions that concluded in the past-- King Alfred occupying and fortifying London, King Alfred not being able to win the loyalty of its citizens, and the Danes using this weakness to their advantage in 893; please remember, the past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past"; further, if the sentence contains more than two actions in the past, the past perfect tense will be used to refer to all but the latest action. Further, Option E incorrectly uses the pronoun “it” as both a placeholder pronoun and to refer to the noun “this weakness”; please remember, a pronoun can only have one referent in a sentence.

Hence, B is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



To understand the concept of "Past Perfect Tense" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

answer should be B
3 actions: KA occupying and fortifying....I
KA winning loyality........II
Danes knowing the above facts.........III
III happened after I and II.
I and II happened at same time.
So there is difference in time of occurences of I,II event from III event.
Hence we use past perfect.

I feel the fact that is wrong!!

I also don't like the use of "the fact that." If it is a fact, why not just say so. I don't know what value does this idiom add to any sentence.

But the answer is B in this question, because of the errors in other options.

Kudos for the explanation Shraddha ..
I have one question. What does the it refer to in the second portion:

Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used itto their advantage in 893.

(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he
(B) The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had
(C) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he
(D) The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean that he
(E) Just because King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he

Thanks for the Kudos.
The possessive "its" refers to "London" in this sentence. Citizens belong only a to country and there is just one country mentioned in the sentence before "its". Now, do not get confused to see a possessive pronoun referring to a non-possessive noun. It is absolutely fine for a possessive pronoun to refer to a non-possessive noun. However, a possessive noun cannot be referred to by a non-possessive pronoun.
For example, we cannot say: Lisa's cat is very pretty and she takes very good care of it.
In this sentence, non-possessive "she" cannot be used for possessive Lisa's.

Hope this helps.
Shraddha

Thanks again Shraddha. But in the questions I am talking of "it". There is no "its".

Hi Rohit,
My bad. I thought you asked about the possessive "its" in the first part of the sentence.
"it" in the second part of the sentence is referring to "weakness".

Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.

The Danes were aware of this weakness that King Alfred had not won the loyalty of the citizen. So the Danes used that weakness to their advantage in 893.

Hope this helps.
Shraddha

Hi Shraddha,
The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had

I have two questions in regards to tenses.
1) I thought that Alfred occupied (had before verb occupied) first and then fortified in the the year 886
2) he had occupied and he had -also- won - using two past perfect sentence within the same sentence .

he had jogged and ran in the morning.
Does this refer to two different actions or two simultaneous actions ?

Thanks in advance.

Hi, yes you do need the second 'had'

The main sentence is the second part, after the colon.

The underlined section is all prior to the comma and is referring to that later action. So everything in that section happened before the main part of the sentence, so all needs the 'had'

Clear?

Hi,
I`m still confused. Is it possible for you to break the sentence on lines of timeline ?
Is it possible for you to provide a simple sentence with two hads used ?

OK, Here is the correct answer in full:

The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.

If you split it down, it is essentially saying:

Because this:

King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had also won the loyalty of its citizens

Happened

This then happened afterwards:

the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893

So every thing that happened first needs to be shown to be further in the past than the stuff that happened second.

The correct idiomatic usage of Just Becasue is - Just because X doesn't mean that Y ( options A, C and E rejected ; 3:2 split )

(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he - Incorrect
(C) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he - Incorrect
(E) Just because King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he - Incorrect


Left with 2 options -

(B) The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had - Correct
(886) Alfred occupied and fortified London ----------->(893) Danes invaded London
Alfred occupied and fortified London before Danes invaded London , so Had + Past Participle is correct.

(D) The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean that he - Incorrect

Hence (B) is correct !!

Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.

(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he
(B) The fact that King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he had
(C) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he
(D) The fact that King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean that he
(E) Just because King Alfred had occupied and fortified London in 886, it did not mean he

We might drop C, D, and E in one go, since the pronoun doest seems to have a single noun to antecede. The only singular noun it can refer to is 'London' and to say 'London did not mean' makes no good sense.
Between A and B ---1. B is clearer in that the past perfect tense used to describe the actions were prior to the Danish invasion seven years later. 2. A is a faulty construction. The first part which is a subordinate clause started by 'because' should be followed by an IC using an appropriate subject. You will find that there is no main clause upon which the sub-clause can depend upon. Here there is a subordinate phrase ( which seems to act as the subject) followed by the verb' did not mean', which in turn is modified by a relative clause started by 'that. There is a 'causal clause' but no 'effect clause'.

Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.

(A) Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he

I understand the reason of rejecting A is that subject can not be replaced with clause.

AjiteshArun EducationAisle CrackVerbal CrackVerbalGMAT svasan05 : Actually , I just want to double confirm that there could not be any answer in GMAT in which clause can be subject of a sentence.

It means , We have something wrong in our daily usage. usually I heard/said such sentences. Example: I can't go to supermarket doesn't mean I can't buy items.
In my first reading, I could not reject A because my ears have heard such sentence constructions.

Hi mSKR,

There are situations in which we don't want to use informal constructions, but normal conversation is not one of them. So avoid just because on the GMAT, but there is no reason to stop using it altogether.

Let's add a just because to your example:
Just because I can't go to supermarket doesn't mean I can't buy items.

This is not expected to be correct on the GMAT exam, but people do use it in normal conversation, and no one can seriously argue that they can't understand what this sentence is trying to say just because it uses a just because.

Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he also won the loyalty of its citizens: the invading Danes were well aware of this weakness and used it to their advantage in 893.

We can eliminate C, D, and E because there is no proper antecedent for 'it'.

Between A and B:



'because' starts a subordinating conjunction. Therefore, we need a subject for the main clause. As it stands, the sentence is a fragment. This is easier to see if you remove 'just' from the sentence:

Just because King Alfred occupied and fortified London in 886 did not mean that he

Since we're using simple past tense "occupied and fortified", we need present tense for "did not mean". These two events did not occur at the same time.



B looks good. We have past perfect in 'had occupied' and 'he had' to depict that a certain action occurred before another action.

I don't think past perfect is absolutely necessary since the sequence of events is crystal clear, but it's not incorrect usage.