The ground swell of public opinion made it inevitable that the Senate

Question

The ground swell of public opinion made  it inevitable that the Senate would approve  the president’s energy proposals.

(A) it inevitable that the Senate would approve

(B) it inevitable that the Senate had approved

(C) it inevitable of the Senate to approve

(D) inevitable the approval of the Senate of

(E) the approval of the Senate inevitable of

rakesh.id · Answer

My pick is  A .

However, if there were an option like:

it inevitable that the Senate approve

I would have picked that, because the sentence seems to be in the subjunctive mood ("inevitable that").

I would appreciate others' opinion on this option.

ChrisLele · Answer

This sentence is not an example of the subjunctive mood. This mood is used, amongst other things, to express a desire or issue a command.

Ex. 1) The government demanded that he pay the fee.

Notice how the verb 'pay' is not in the 'pays' form, the way you would expect with the 3rd. person singular pronoun 'he.' This grammatical form is indicates the subjunctive mood. Now let's look at another sentence:

Ex. 2) The Senate approves the President's bill.

Notice how there is no desire or command expressed with 'approve.' Likewise the sentence, 'the Senate would approve' is not in the subjunctive mood. (Really the only way to make it so is by coming up with a weird sentence, such as 'The President demanded that the Senate approve the bill'...I don't think the U.S. government has become that contentious

).

pqhai · Answer

Correct idiom is:   made  it  inevitable that X would approve Y  . "It" here properly refers to "approve".

(A) it inevitable that the Senate  would approve   >>> CORRECT 
(B) it inevitable that the Senate  had approved   >>> WRONG. change meaning  
(C) it inevitable  of the Senate to approve   >>> WRONG. "made it inevitable of X to do Y" is unidiomatic. 
(D) inevitable the approval of the Senate of  >>> WRONG idiom.  
(E) the approval of the Senate inevitable of  >>> WRONG idiom.

Bunuel · Answer

KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

A

You can say “It was inevitable that I would miss my bus.”But you can’t say “It was inevitable of me to miss my bus.”You need “that.”(B) says that it’s “inevitable” that the Senate had approved the proposals, past tense. But something that’s already happened can’t be said to be inevitable.

abhik1502 · Answer

Will someone pls suggest what exactly pronoun "it" refers out here.

It looks like it is referring to clause "the Senate would approve the president???s energy ", but ideally pronoun can't refer to a clause.

WIll someone pls clarify.

PoojanB · Answer

Hi abhik1502

The sentence uses the subjunctive mood.This mood is primarily used to express wish etc.
Here, it is not referring as a pronoun but is rather a part of subjunctive structure.

Consider the example given by Bunuel in official explanation
"It was inevitable that I would miss my bus.” Here also It is present but not working as a pronoun.
In general the structure works like this :
It + Be Verbs (any tense) + Subjunctive Adjective + that + Sub + Base Form of Verb + Comp (copied from https://www.learngrammar.net/english-grammar/subjunctive)

Hope this helps.

abhik1502

Will someone pls suggest what exactly pronoun "it" refers out here.

It looks like it is referring to clause "the Senate would approve the president???s energy ", but ideally pronoun can't refer to a clause.

WIll someone pls clarify.

gaurav2m · Answer

Hi  Bunuel  / VeritasKarishma ,

Could you please let me know what 'IT' refers to?
I don't think this sentence is a case of subjunctive verb?

KarishmaB · Answer

'It is inevitable' means it is bound to happen in the future.

Some ways of using 'inevitable' are:

A is inevitable. 
or
A made it inevitable that B would happen.

'it' is a placeholder for 'B would happen'.

'would' is the past belief of future. When the public's opinion made it inevitable, the Senate's approval was in the future. So we use 'would' and not 'had approved' - the past perfect.

minalgambhir · Answer

ERROR ANALYSIS -

1) Correct as is

ANSWER CHOICE ANALYSIS -

A) CORRECT
B) Past perfect can't be used because the 2 events are unrelated
C) 'inevitable of' is wrong
D) Wrong meaning
E) Wrong meaning

MissBong · Answer

Hi,

As we know that it is almost impossible to learn all the idioms, can someone explain why is the option C wrong despite being unidiomatic?

AjiteshArun

The ground swell of public opinion made it inevitable that the Senate

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The ground swell of public opinion made it inevitable that the Senate

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