Monday, June 8, 2009

Example: Possessive and Object pronoun

Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband inspired her to write several mystery novels; travelers to Egypt can still stay at the Old Cataract Hotel, the model for the hotel in one of Christie's most famous books.

1. Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband inspired her to write several mystery novels
2. Agatha Christie used her travels with her archaeologist husband to inspire several mystery novels
3. Because her husband was an archaeologist, Agatha Christie was able to use their travels as inspiration for several of her mystery novels
4. Together with her archaeologist husband, Agatha Christie was inspired to incorporate their travel into several of her mystery novels
5. Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband served as inspiration for several of her mystery novels

Answer:

This sentence has a pronoun agreement error. Subject and object pronouns cannot refer back to possessive nouns; they must refer only to subject and object nouns. The subject in this sentence is "Agatha Christie's travels," not Agatha Christie herself. The first instance of "her" is correct because this pronoun is used as a possessive: "her [Agatha Christie's] archaeologist husband." However, the second instance of "her," an object pronoun, is incorrect: "inspired her [Agatha Christie, who is not an object in this sentence] to write..."

(A) This choice is incorrect as it repeats the original sentence.

(B) This choice illogically states that the travels inspired the novels themselves, rather than inspiring Christie to write the novels.

(C) This choice introduces a false cause-effect statement. The original meaning indicates that Christie traveled because her husband was an archaeologist. According to this choice, however, Christie used their travels as inspiration because her husband was an archaeologist, which is clearly illogical.

(D) This choice seems to indicate that Christie and her husband were inspired to write the novels together. This cannot be the case because this choice also clearly states that they are "her mystery novels," not both of theirs.

(E) CORRECT. This choice corrects the original pronoun agreement error by moving the second instance of "her" in front of "mystery novels," which changes it from an object pronoun to a possessive pronoun: "Agatha Christie's travels...her [Agatha Christie's] mystery novels..."

4 comments:

  1. Excellent one! Nice posts here Lucky! I am a frequent visitor now :)

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  2. Thanks buddy.. all the best to you.

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  3. thanks for sharing information really it is very useful

    GMAT scoring

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  4. Examples given out here are helping students in establishing all what they actually needed to look for and hopefully these would further amount to better understanding. summarizing non fiction

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