<p>When farms were first settling, it was the building of a barn that announced to the world that the builders were planted on a piece of land and intended to stay.</p>
<p>(A) NO CHANGE
(B) first settled,
(C) settling,
(D) having first settlers,</p>
<p>I was debating between B and C, and the answer is A. Can someone explain to me why?</p>
<p>It looks to me like one of those trick questions where they use words like we usually dont. I would have chosen B. I think your teacher is wrong. They make mistakes sometimes.</p>
<p>It can’t be B because of the “were”. (farms were first settled?)</p>
<p>C would work grammatically but does not make sense with the remainder of the sentence. Therefore, it hast to be A.</p>
<p>^ Not sure why it wouldn’t work. My thought was B, and found it surprising that the answer was A, but then after reading it with that in mind, the sentence made sense. </p>
<p>I think it has to do with the settling part. Like looking back at history, when such farms were settling down, they made a statement that they would settle forever. So in that sense they didn’t quite settle down, or had settled, but were in the process of settling down. =S</p>