aritrar4 wrote:
A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk
it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make sense of speech.
(A) it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make
(B) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words
and, as a result, to make
(C) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words
and, the result of this, they are unable to make
(D) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words, and results in not making
(E) as to hamper the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words, resulting in being unable to make
sayantanc2k daagh AndrewN - could you please help me with a doubt?
I was evaluating choices B,C and D (eliminated A and E for unidiomatic usage) and was confused by the comma after "and" in options B and C. Should the comma not have been before "and" (
distinguish discrete sounds and words, and as a result, to make)? Is it trivial compared to the parallelism that B maintains, which makes it the correct choice? Thanks for your help !
Hello,
aritrar4. You pose a fair question, one that
DmitryFarber has touched on indirectly in his post above. In choice (B), the phrase
as a result is simply acting as an interrupter or, if you prefer, a parenthetical aside. Whenever you encounter such interrupters, you can remove them from the sentence to see whether the grammar and meaning would still check out. Examining (B), we would get,
A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, as a result, to make sense of speech.This makes sense. The noun
ability presents parallel elements in the infinitives that follow, [ability]
to distinguish and [ability]
to make. A comma before
and would be inappropriate.
Meanwhile, choice (C)
should include a comma before the conjunction, since what follows the interrupter (nonsensical as it may be) is an independent clause. The correctly punctuated version would read,
that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words, and, the result of this, they are unable to makeIt is really
the result of this that derails the answer choice, but (C) also adds nothing in the way of clarity by introducing
they and a second independent clause. Choice (B) is a clear winner.
I hope that helps. Thank you for calling my attention to the question.
- Andrew