<p>I have rephrased some of the following questions.</p>
<ol>
<li>a. She won the distinction of being the first women to receive the award.
b. She won the distinction of the first women to receive the award.</li>
</ol>
<p>why is being" needed here?</p>
<ol>
<li>Astronomers at the Palomar Observatory have discovered a distant supernova explosion, one that they
believe is a type previously unknown to science.
(A) that they believe is
(B) that they believe it to be
(C) they believe that it is of
(D) they believe that is
(E) they believe to be of</li>
</ol>
<p>the answer is E, but i don't understand the explanation: In the context of this sentence, the infinitive to be is more appropriate than the limited present-tense is in referring to an event that occurred long ago but has been discovered only recently. Can anyone explain?</p>
<ol>
<li>Despite research on the diagnosis of heart disease and the use of increasingly sophisticated technology in its treatment, the condition of coronary arteries is still difficult to assess precisely.
why is C correct; i mean, why is it that its correctly stands for heart disease.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>when the “being” is used as a verb, it is correct. </li>
<li>ambiguous pronoun?</li>
</ol>
<p>for question 1, i can’t see the difference btw with and without “being”; probably because i am not a native speaker. for 3, i do think “its” is ambiguous, coz it may well points to technology; it is closest to technology.</p>
<p>For question 2, one of the issues that that the supernova is not itself the type. The supernova is one example of a group, and the group is the type. In English, this relation is expressed by saying that the supernova is “of the type.” There are only two choices that contain “of,” C and E. The use of “believe to be” is common in English, and it is correct. The other wording would not be used in English at all (unless you have made a copying error).</p>
<p>In question 1, “of” is a preposition. Therefore it needs to introduce a noun, which identifies the distinction. The woman won the distinction of her status as the first woman to receive the award. So the gerund “being” is used (verb form ending in “ing” used as a noun), to indicate that the distinction is her status–i.e., her state of being. If one writes that she won the “distinction of the first woman to receive the award,” then technically, this would mean that someone else was the first woman to receive the award, and that person offered her some distinction. </p>
<p>I can’t really give you simple guidelines about ambiguous/non-ambiguous references, with regard to question 3. Most native speakers would not find the “its” ambiguous. I guess that part of the reason “its” is unambiguous here is that the phrase is "the use of increasingly sophisticated technology in . . . " Following the word “in” one doesn’t expect a reference back to technology; instead one expects a reference to something else, in which the technology is used. </p>
<p>I think these are just difficult for a non-native speaker. I would have similar problems with other languages.</p>
<p>thank you QUANTMECH, your explanations are clear enough; about pronoun ambiguity, i guess there’s really no simple rules, but that we just have to judge in different situations.</p>
<p>about pronoun ambiguity again; in the following question:
Some plants use chemical signals that repel insects, and also, these signals help to put neighboring plants on alert so they can <a href=“c”>/U</a> mount their own defenses. No error</p>
<p>I know B is obviously wrong, but i think the “they” in C is also ambiguous. Why can’t it refer to others nouns.</p>
<p>A pronoun is not ambiguous just because there are multiple nouns of the same type that come before it.
Some plants use chemical signals that repel insects, and these signals help to put neighboring plants on alert so they can mount their own defenses.
In this sentence, the word “they” is not ambiguous, because the context and meaning of the sentence strongly suggest that it refers to “neighboring plants.” Similarly, in my previous sentence, “it” clearly refers to “‘they,’” and not to “sentence,” for obvious reasons. A plural pronoun is not ambiguous just because there is more than one plural noun before it. You have to take into account the meaning and the context.
Despite research on the diagnosis of heart disease and the use of increasingly sophisticated technology in its treatment, the condition of coronary arteries is still difficult to assess precisely.
The same is the case here. The word “its” is not ambiguous because it is clear in context that the pronoun refers to “heart disease.” One clue is that the noun phrase “its treatment” and the noun phrase “diagnosis of heart disease” are very similar. The sentence is talking about the diagnosis of heart disease as well as the treatment of heart disease.</p>
<p>
In this case, a distinction is a condition a person holds that distinguishes her from other people. You can’t say that the trait is “the first woman to receive the award.” That is not a trait, but a person. “being the first woman to receive the award” is a trait/condition, because it describes that person. You can describe her as being the first woman to receive the award. Here are some examples of the same structure:
Michael Jordan holds the distinction of scoring the least in a single round in the Three-Point Shootout; he scored only 5 points.</p>
<p>Wilt Chamberlain holds the distinction of scoring the most in a single game; he scored 100 points against the New York Knicks in 1962.</p>
<p>someone has raised this question before, but i still have a question. Could Crazybandit or someone else explain?
An amateur potter [herself], the accountant offered [to help] the artist with his business accounts, complicated [as they were] [by] his unusual system of record keeping.
OA is E.
i don’t understand the function of “complicated”. Since “complicated” works as an adj here (otherwise it cannot be followed by “as they were”), how is “by” idiomatic? Can you use by after an adj? eg.
The statue was magnificent “by”…?</p>
<p>The sentence could be rewritten as follows, while keeping the meaning:
Because the accountant was an amateur potter herself [and therefore presumably interested in the arts, or sympathetic to the artist], she offered to help the artist with his business accounts, even though they were complicated by his unusual system of record keeping.</p>
<p>“Complicated by” is an natural usage in English. The phrase following the preposition “by” should explain how or why something was complicated. </p>
<p>“By” can follow a number of forms of this same sort. For example: Initially, Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi; but seduced as he was by the dark side of the Force, he turned to evil.</p>
<p>On the other hand, with many adjectives, “by” isn’t used to tell how or why, and “magnificent” would be among these.</p>
<p>Ignore the “by . . .” part. It only tells you what is causing the complication. The phrase you are probably confused by is “complicated as they were.” Here is an example of this structure (underlined):
Tired as they were, the group trudged on.
“Tired as they were” means “Tired to the degree that they were.” So, like QuantMech said, it’s effectively contrasting the group’s actions (trudging on) and the group’s state of being (tiredness), such that it essentially translates into Even though they were tired, the group trudged on.
The accountant offered to help the artist with his business accounts, complicated as they were by his unusual system of record keeping.
This says that the accountant offered to help the artist with his business accounts even though they were complicated. The sentence then gives you more information (with the “by . . .” phrase) to tell you what is making the artist’s business accounts so complicated–that is, his unusual way of keeping records.</p>