<p>what's wrong with C?</p>
<p>George Thorton Emmons <was one=""> of a handful of ethnographers who <committed> <their life=""> <to studying=""> the Tlingit culture of Northwest Coast.</to></their></committed></was></p>
<p>The "their life" is wrong because "their" refers to Thorton Emmons, not the ethnographers. So it should be "his life", not "their life."</p>
<p>Try replacing "was one of the handful of ethnographers" with "was a man". The new sentence will read:</p>
<p>George Thorton Emmons was a man who committed their life to studying...</p>
<p>The error will seem clear now. :)</p>
<p>the problem is that "their life" should be "their lives."</p>
<p>the main verb in the sentence is "was," and the predicate nominative is "one of a handful of ethnographers who committed their lives to studying the tlingit culture of the Northwest Coast."</p>
<p>the main noun in the predicate is "one." one is modified by the prepositional phrase "of a handful," and "handful" is modified by the prepositional phrase "of ethnographers who committed their lives to studying the tlingit culture of the the northwest coast." within that prepositional phrase, the object of the preposition "of" is the noun "ethnographers," which is plural. the relative pronoun "who" stands in the place of the word "ethnographers," so if we just deconstructed the last part of the sentence (by replacing "who" with its antecedent) it could look like this:</p>
<p>"ethnographers committed their lives to studying the tlingit culture of the northwest coast."</p>
<p>so "their" refers to ethnographers. since the ethnographers don't have one collective life, the plural form, "lives," is appropriate here.</p>
<p>from an SAT strategy perspective, though, none of the above is really necessary. remember that, on these questions, we don't have to know how to <em>correct</em> the sentence--we only need to identify that's wrong with it. "their life" can't possibly be correct unless we're talking about a symbolic or metaphorical union of several souls together; otherwise, multiple people must necessarily possess multiple lives. so we can tell that either the pronoun should be singular or the noun should be plural. either way, (c) is the answer.</p>