imhimanshu wrote:
Ryunosuke Akutagawa‘s
knowledge of the literatures of Europe, China and
that of Japan were instrumental in his development as a writer, informing his literary style as much as the content of his fiction.
(A)
that of Japan were instrumental in his development as a writer, informing his literary style as much as
(B)
that of Japan was instrumental in his development as a writer, and it informed his literary style as well as
(C) Japan was instrumental in his development as a writer, informing
both his literary style
and(D) Japan was instrumental in his development
as a writer,
as it informed his literary style
as much as(E) Japan
were instrumental in his development as a writer, informing both his literary style in addition to
First GlanceThe underline is long, so there's a good chance that the question will test Modifier, Parallelism, or Meaning issues.
Issues(1) Parallelism: X, Y, and ZThere appears to be an
X, Y, and Z list overlapping the underline: The literatures of
X (Europe), Y (china) and Z (_____). Bingo─Parallelism! X and Y are already parallel. Is
Z?
The first two items in the list are geographic locations (
Europe and China). The third item should also be a location.
That of refers to the word
literatures, but the list
Europe, China, and the literature of Japan is not parallel. Eliminate answers (A) and (B).
(2) Subject─Verb: wereThe main subject of the original sentence is the word
knowledge, which is singular. The main verb is
were, which is plural.
The subject,
knowledge, is not underlined, so the correct answer must contain a singular verb. Scan the answers; answers (A) and (E) both use the plural verb
were. Eliminate answers (A) and (E).
Note: Why isn't the subject
literatures?
That's the trap! The word literatures is part of a
prepositional phrase─of the
literatures─and a noun within a prepositional phrase can't be the subject of the sentence.
(3) Idiom: both X as well as Y; both X in addition to YA vertical comparison of the answers reveals an idiom that's changing from answer to answer:
(A) informing
his literary style as much as
the content(B) informing both
his literary style as well as
the content(C) informing both
his literary style and
the content(D) informed
his literary style as much as
the content(E) informing both
his literary style in additional
to the contentNotice that the
X (
his literary) and
Y (
the content)
don't change, but the construction of the idiom itself does.
Answer (B) uses the structure
both X as well as Y; answer (E) uses
both X in additional to Y. When beginning with the word both, the correct idiomatic structure is
both X and Y, as in answer (C). Eliminate answers (B) and (E).
(4) MeaningAnswer (D) tosses in a lot of instances of the word
as:
as a writer, as it informed his literary style as much as the content of his fiction. Some might think that this sounds wordy or awkward. Why?
The sentence is attempting to say that Akutagawa's knowledge informed two things: (1)
his style and (2)
the content of his work. The
structure of answer
(D) creates an
ambiguous meaning. It might mean that his knowledge informed his style and that his
knowledge also informed his
content, both to the same extent or level. Alternately, it might mean that his
knowledge informed his
style and that his
content also informed his
style.
Consider this shorter example: The barking dog scared the mouse as much as the cat.
Did the barking dog equally scare both the cat and the mouse? Or did both the barking dog and the cat equally scare the mouse? it's not clear. Eliminate answer (D).
The Correct AnswerAnswer
(C) corrects the original parallelism error by dropping the
that of, resulting in a correctly constructed
X, Y, and Z list. In addition, this answer corrects the subject─verb error, changing the plural verb
were to the singular verb
was to match the singular subject
knowledge.
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