walker wrote:
The mistakes children make in learning to speak tell linguists more about
how they learn language than the correct forms they use.
(A) how they learn language than
(B) how one learns language than
(C) how children learn language than do
(D) learning language than
(E) their language learning than do
Tough for me. Please explain in detail.
I think, the question is all about the meaning.
Scrapping all non - essential elements, we can deduce the intended meaning -
mistakes tell linguists more than correct forms.
i.e.The linguists are interested in learning how children learn a language. While learning language, children will make mistakes and will also use correct forms.
Linguists don't get much help when children use the correct form; however, linguists get greater help when children use incorrect forms, make a mistake.
So, crude sentence can be written as -
mistakes help linguists more than the correct forms do.which can be written in reverse as -
mistakes help linguists more than do the correct forms.Now, let's articulate the sentence with non - essentials (underlined) that we removed earlier, we get -
The mistakes
children make in learning to speak help (tell) linguists more
about how they learn language than do the correct forms they use.
The only problem remaining is the ambiguous
"they" which can refer to both linguists and children. Let's remove the by
simply using "children" again. So, we get
correct sentence:
The mistakes children make in learning to speak tell linguists more about how children learn language than do the correct forms they use.
Answer: CHope it helps.
Cheers