<p>Which is the best version of the underlined portions of sentences 4 and 5?
A book I found contained selected letters from five generations of <strong>a family. The Pastons, who lived</strong> in a remote part of England over 500 years ago.</p>
<p>(A) (as it is now)
(B) a family. The Pastons, living
(C) a family; it was the Pastons living
(D) the Paston family, who lived
(E) the family named Paston and living</p>
<p>Answer: D</p>
<p>but while I was making sure that every other answer was wrong, I found that C doesn't really seem wrong to me. The collegeboard website writes that the latter clause in choice C is dependent and that a semi-colon should always link indenpendent clauses together.
But to me, the latter clause doesn't seem like a dependent clause; it has its own subject ("it") and verb ("was").</p>
<p>It's nothing hard, but can someone tell me a better explanation?</p>
<p>I’m not really sure how to explain it, but to me, you don’t need the semicolon, and D just connects the two clauses much more elegantly. I’m not sure about the “it” in C, because Pastons is plural – but I could be wrong. It’s a funky clause. Anyway, D is definitely a better choice than C.</p>
<p>@stef1a, thanx; but you see, i felt that D is right as well. It’s just that I want a better, more detailed explanation of why the grammar is wrong. Thanks anyways though :)</p>
<p>@specific, thanx; but I still don’t get why C is logically incorrect.</p>
<p>->A book I found had letters from a family; it was the Pastons living in England.</p>
<p>Now that i look at it, I just feel that there is a pronoun-antecedent problem. Usually, I think, the subject of a the first clause and that of the clause following semi-colon are the same. In this case, it’s not. I think, probably, that’s the problem.</p>
<p>^I don’t know too much about grammar, but a lot of things have a subject and verb but are not complete sentences. Here’s an example: Justine, though she was smart, bombed the math test. The real subject verb pair in this is “Justine” and “bombed.” “Though she was smart” is another example of a dependent clause. Although it has a subject and verb in “she was”, it is not a complete sentence. Taken alone, it means nothing. A dash, not a semicolon, is appropriate for adding on a dependent clause after the independent clause.</p>
<p>Just because it makes sense doesn’t mean it’s correct. Almost all of the choices given on the SATs are grammatically correct, but the decision is to pick the BEST one.</p>
<p>oh yeah, i posted the wrong thing about dependent clauses sorry.</p>
<p>dependent clauses are ones like “I went there because I wanted to see her”; the latter clause with subject and verb, but since it starts with “because” it is dependent.</p>
<p>i was confused because usually, dependent clauses start with subordinating conjunctions</p>
but I still don’t get why C is logically incorrect.</p>