a grammar question

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>Nearly all pundits agree that in spite of his surprisingly strong and close campaign Republicans are unlikely to renominate him in four years. No error</p>

<p>Where does the error occur ?</p>

<p>I think there should be a comma between campaign and Republicans. Is that right ?</p>

<p>But what about "his" and "him" ? They have no antecendent. </p>

<p>On the SAT, is pronoun with no clear antecedent counted as an error ?
I think that it shoundn't be counted as error, because maybe antecedent is in previous sentences ...</p>

<p>What do you think ?</p>

2

<p>Yes, you're right. Part C has the error - the missing comma.</p>

3

<p>I agree that it's C, but for more than just the fact that it needs a comma. "In spite of HIS campaign, REPUBLICANS" sounds incorrect. I would think the subject pronoun would have to agree with the preceding possessive adjective. In any case, we all agree it's C :)</p>

4

<p>Is this an official SAT question? Where did you get this question?</p>

5

<p>"I agree that it's C, but for more than just the fact that it needs a comma. "In spite of HIS campaign, REPUBLICANS" sounds incorrect. I would think the subject pronoun would have to agree with the preceding possessive adjective. In any case, we all agree it's C"</p>

<p>That's what I thought at first, then I noticed the comma missing. Since there can only be one mistake, I guess we all just go with the comma....</p>

6

<p>I dunno about you guys, but I never see punctuation errors on the official tests. (For sentence errors, not improving sentences)</p>

7

<p>I was really confused with the word "HIS"; where did the sentence mention this person? But yeah where did you get this from?</p>

8

<p>The idea is that the "his" is referring to a person that doesn't matter. </p>

<p>I'll try to make it more clear: Think about if the question had been written like this:</p>

<p>"Nearly all pundits agree that in spite of Larry's surprisingly strong and close campaign Republicans are unlikely to renominate Larry in four years. No error"</p>

<p>Essentially, College Board was too lazy to invent a name. Either that, or they wanted to confuse you by using the pronoun. However, there's simply nothing grammatically incorrect about their pronoun usage in the original statement.</p>

9

<p>but usually if a pronoun is given without a clear antecedent it's wrong...</p>

10

<p>No, if it's unclear as to which antecedent it refers to, it's wrong. If it has no antecedent, I'm pretty sure it's fine.</p>

<p>Ex:
Mary and Jane both wanted to go to the movies, but she couldn't make it because she had to help her dad.</p>

<p>Who does she refer to? The antecedent is ambiguous, because it could refer to one of two people. </p>

<p>But if the sentence were like this:
Mary and Jane both wanted to go to the movies, so they invited him along as well.</p>

<p>I'm pretty sure this is grammatically fine, because the him refers to an unnamed, third-party, but it is distinct in that it is referring to that third-party figure, whereas in the first sentence it was unclear whether the 'she' referred to Mary or Jane.</p>

<p>But I could be wrong.</p>

11

<p>I'm pretty sure they don't make questions whose only mistake is a mistake in punctuation. But seriously though, where did you get this question?</p>