marine wrote:
Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson were written over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumbering her letters to anyone else.
(A) Dickinson were written over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumbering
(B) Dickinson were written over a period that begins a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ended shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumber
(C) Dickinson, written over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and that ends shortly before Emily’s death in 1886 and outnumbering
(D) Dickinson, which were written over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother, ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, and outnumbering
(E) Dickinson, which were written over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumber
pl review my analysis.
Q. Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington
Dickinson were written over a period beginning a few
years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and
ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886,
outnumbering her letters to anyone else
Meaning
ED wrote letters to SH over a period of time
Started before Susan marriage and ended before Emily`s death
Error Analysis
1) Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington
Dickinson were written over a period beginning a few
years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and
ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886,
outnumbering her letters to anyone else
The sentence has only one clause.
S-V is correct
V is correctly placed in past tense (passive voice-simple past)
Parallelism is correct.... beginning and ending
Pronoun...her refers correctly to Emily
Meaning is clear
idioms...none
modifiers...beginning and ending correctly modifies period
....outnumbering also correctly adds information to the preceding clause
POE
A is correct
B & C parallelism issue
D fragment
E placement of
which is not next to
letters I was confused b/w A & E, but for the stated reason selected A.
I don`t find any grammatical error in A.
Pl clarify
First, let's address the reason that you eliminated option E. Logically, "which" can only refer to "letters" here, and not to "Susan Huntington Dickinson" (since she's a person and "which" can't refer to people). Since the logical antecedent is clear, "which" doesn't need to be placed right next to "letters".
Second, option A can be eliminated in two ways: from the standpoint of meaning, and from that of grammar. The first is the explanation given in the
. If I were to summarize the main point of this sentence, I'd say: "Emily Dickinson wrote more letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson than she wrote to anyone else." The period in which the letters were written is secondary to the main point of the sentence. In option A, "outnumber" is not even a verb: it's a verb-ing modifier. It doesn't make much sense to say that the main point of the sentence is to tell us when the letters were written.
Also, if you're unable to decide what the main point of the sentence is, you can apply the rules about verb-ing modifiers to this question. A verb-ing modifier placed after a comma either describes the preceding action or presents a result of the preceding action. The latter option is clearly ruled out in this case, so we're left with the former. Does "outnumbering" describe "were written"? It doesn't. The fact that the letters were written during a specific period isn't logically related to the fact that the letters outnumber Dickinson's letters to anyone else. So, the verb-ing modifier "outnumbering" doesn't make sense here. We clearly need the verb "outnumber" in the correct answer.
I hope this helps to clarify your doubt.