I was taking the practice ACT test-- 1572 form and I do not understand one of the answers. The questions are number 41 and 42. The sentence is incorrect as written: Today there are more than four hundred potters around, all of which make their pots by hand.
The correct answer replaces “potters around” to “potters in Mata Ortiz.” Why can you not just delete the “around” and put a comma after potters?
Also, “which” is correct to “whom.” How would I know that it is not “them” or “who”?
I am assuming the correction, “in Mata Ortiz,” has something to do with information you have not provided. The “potters around” reference could be referring to any group of potters, including possibly all potters in the world, and that would still be true if you removed the “around.” I assume there was something proviided to indicate the passage was talking about the small Mexican village, Mata Ortiz, a reference to which would be needed if the passage was supposed to be referring only to potters in that village.
You would have to change the comma to a period and start a new sentence with the “all” to be able to use “them.” Who is subjective, meaning it is the subject of a sentence or phrase that performs the action of the verb and whom is objective, meaning it is the object of the verb or any prepositional phrase such as “of” whom. Examples for simplicity:
“Who spoke at the meeting?” Who is the subject of the sentence just like he or she would be.
“You married whom?” Whom is the object of the sentence just like him or her would be.
“So he taught people from Mata Ortiz to make pots. Today there are more than four hundred potters around, (41) all of which (42) make their pots by hand, following the traditions of the Paquime Indians.”
A. NO CHANGE
B. people creating art now,
C. potters in Mata Ortiz,
D. DELETE the underlined portion and place a comma after the word hundred
41 would have to be C. “Around” is such an ambiguous word; with no change, you don’t know whether the passage is talking about just in Mata Ortiz or in the entire world (and there are clearly more than 400 potters on the planet), so A doesn’t work. B doesn’t work because it’s only talking about potters, and there are obviously more than 400 people on Earth creating art. D doesn’t work because it would just say “there are more than four hundred”. More than four hundred what? Given the previous sentence, you wouldn’t know whether there are more than 400 pots, more than 400 potters, etc. Therefore, it has to be C, which makes it clear that the “more than 400” is referring to the number of potters in Mata Ortiz.
F. NO CHANGE
G. whom
H. them
J. who
42 has to be whom (G). It can’t be no change because “which” always refers to things while “them”, “who”, or “whom” refer to people. Potters are people; therefore, which wouldn’t work. It can’t be H (them) because there would be two independent clauses separated by only a comma, which isn’t allowed. That would only work if you separated the sentence (with a period before all). Now, I’m not 100% sure about this, so take this with a grain of salt, but I’m fairly certain that the difference between who and whom is that who always refers to the subject of a sentence while whom refers to the object of the sentence. The sentence states that “there are more than four hundred potters” There = subject, are = predicate, and potters = object. Because potters are the object of the sentence, and the word in 42 is referring to them, 42 must be whom, or G.
With the original questions outlined, it is easy to see why 41 is C and not D. If you choose D, you are not only deleting “around”, but also “potters”, so the sentence wouldn’t make sense.
