<p>Can someone please explain to me why the answer to the following question is D?</p>
<p>Whether the ancient Egyptians actually sailed or did not to South America remains uncertain, but Heyerdahl's Ra II expedition demonstrated that they could have done so.</p>
<p>A. Whether the ancient Egyptians actually sailed or did not
B. Whether in actuality the ancient Egyptians sailed or did not
C. The actuality of the sailing by the ancient Egyptians
D. That the ancient Egyptians actually sailed
E. The ancient Egyptians, their actual sailing</p>
<p>None of the answer choices seemed right to me. >.<''</p>
<p>the other choices are also awkward. Choice A sounds very awkward by introducing or did not. choice b is awkward with acutality. and e makes a runon sentence. c just sounds weird.
Basically, u need to use ur ear and just know rthat in these constructions, that is preferred.</p>
<p>Ohhh...yeah, that's why I randomly picked an answer because none of them seemed correct. Can you give me a few examples of other sentences that would be under the same construction?</p>
<p>Whether the ancient Egyptians actually sailed or did not to South America remains uncertain, but Heyerdahl's Ra II expedition demonstrated that they could have done so.</p>
<p>A. Whether the ancient Egyptians actually sailed or did not
B. Whether in actuality the ancient Egyptians sailed or did not
C. The actuality of the sailing by the ancient Egyptians
D. That the ancient Egyptians actually sailed
E. The ancient Egyptians, their actual sailing
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A and B are wrong:
"Not" must always come after the verb in these constructions. "Whether he painted or not paint" is incorrect, while "whether he painted or not" is.</p>
<p>C is wrong:
The preposition "by" cannot come after "actuality." The correct, yet still awkward, way to say that would be "The actuality that ancient Egyptians sailed"</p>
<p>E is wrong:
"The ancient Egyptians" is out of place. It can't be the subject, since the verb "is" is not plural, and it's not to whom the sentence is directed, since there are no quotation marks. </p>
<p>If it helps, rearrange the sentence so it says "it is uncertain that the ancient Egyptians actually sailed to South America." I think of "that" in the same way as if it were taking the place of "[the fact] that."</p>
<p>I surmise that the best way to solve this question is to eliminate the wrong answers. </p>
<p>A,B - "or did not" is definitely wrong.
B,C - Using the word actuality is awkward, hence the choices are wrong. Besides, according to Concise Oxford, actually and actuality do not have any relationship. But I may be wrong. Maybe I should dig into Shorter Oxford, or the 22 Volumes of Oxford English Dictionary, or maybe, Webster's Unabridged, for the word's etymology.</p>
<p>E - is definitely wrong, because the overall sentence would be wrong.</p>
<p>This leaves D. As Godfather said, the sentence makes sense if you read it like:
"It is uncertain that ..."</p>