Rembrandt so treasured his collection of Islamic portraits that when

Rembrandt so treasured his collection of Islamic portraits that when forced to sell them in order to raise money, he first made copies of more than twenty.

(A) he first made copies of more than twenty
(B) first he made copies of more than twenty
(C) more than twenty were copied
(D) copies of more than twenty were made
(E) he copies more than twenty of them first

'First' acts as an adverb here modifying the verb 'made'. Therefore A is correct.
The adverb first cannot modify the pronoun 'he' as placed in B. The passive voice and the present tense used C, D, and E render them wrong.
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Hi, isn't (A) an independent clause joined by a comma only? I'm new to this concept.

Rembrandt so treasured his collection of Islamic portraits that when forced to sell them in order to raise money, he first made copies of more than twenty.

(A) he first made copies of more than twenty - has no error. Hence, (A) is the right answer choice.
(B) first he made copies of more than twenty - (B) calls for another action without actually stating that second action, by having the second clause begin with the word ''first''.
(C) more than twenty were copied - the second clause is in the passive form without a clear subject.
(D) copies of more than twenty were made - has the same error as described in (C).
(E) he copies more than twenty of them first - the event took place in the past. So, we cannot use the present tense verb ''copies'' here.

,

i also have the same question, can any expert reply for the same?

Hi gaurav2m lakshya14
"he first made copies of more than twenty " is not an independent clause.
Why ?
Does he made copies randomly. No!
Why did he made copies ?
Due to this bold phrase.
Rembrandt so treasured his collection of Islamic portraits that when forced to sell them in order to raise money

Hope it helps
Feel free to ask if you need further clarifications.

Here's the official explanation provided by the GMAC for this question:

The elliptical construction when forced to sell them in order to raise money should be immediately followed by a noun, noun phrase, or pronoun to make it clear who or what was forced to sell the portraits. The original version is structured in a way that clearly indicates who was forced to sell the portraits and who made the copies.

Option A: Correct. Using appropriate verb forms and sentence structure, this clearly communicates that he (Rembrandt) made the copies, and the position of the pronoun directly after the modifying phrase forced to sell them in order to raise money makes it clear that Rembrandt was the one who was forced to sell them.

Option B: The position of the adverb first causes it to intervene awkwardly between the phrase forced to sell them … and the pronoun he. Furthermore, the connotations of first he made are somewhat different from those of the phrase he first made. The latter more clearly indicates that he made the copies before selling the portraits, whereas first he made tends to suggest that making the copies was the first of a series of things that he did.

Option C: Forced to sell them illogically modifies more than twenty. Saying merely that they were copied, without telling who copied them or caused them to be copied, makes the connection between the copying and Rembrandt’s treasuring the portraits unclear.

Option D: Forced to sell them illogically modifies copies of more than twenty. Saying merely that the copies were made, without telling who made them or caused them to be made, makes the connection between the copying and Rembrandt’s treasuring the portraits unclear.

Option E: The present tense copies is inconsistent with the overall past perspective of the sentence.

The correct answer is A.

Please note that I'm not the author of this explanation. I'm just posting it here since I believe it can help the community.

in e, "he copies 20 of them" means that "he copies not all of them". this is no sense

Hello thangvietnam,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, "he copies 20 of them" simply means that Rembrandt copied 20 out of however many paintings there were in total, which is the intended meaning.

Besides, Option E is anyway incorrect because it incorrectly uses the simple present tense verb "copies" to refer to an action that concluded in the past.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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