Writing help !!

[Misanthropic]

<p>Quincy took Dan to Derek's home (for a visit A),
(never imagining B) that five years (would pass C)
Before (seeing D) Derek again.
The answer is "D" can someone tell me why?</p>

[silverturtle]

<p>My response to your other, recent thread applies by principle here (for others, [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14457546-post1.html]here[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14457546-post1.html]here[/url</a>] is the question):</p>

<p>

The idiomatic convention that “prevent” be succeeded by “from” does not apply here because the relevant form is one in which a direct object follows “prevent,” which object is in turn followed by a gerund (when we use “from”), as in</p>

<p>I want to prevent him from being attacked.</p>

<p>They prevented me from falling into the pit of joyful jellybeans.
In the sentence’s phrase “to prevent its publication,” “prevent” is indeed transitive (“its publication” is the direct object), but we don’t have the gerund that creates the need for “from.” In grammatical parlance, “prevent” is not being used catenatively here; “prevent” introduces no verb and therefore needs no prepositional nexus.</p>

<p>The actual source of error is that “of not being” is the ungrammatical variant on “of its not being.” Other potential alternatives that are correct include “that it had not been.” “Being sufficiently polished” is a gerundial phrase, functionally a noun phrase. We must convey what noun possesses the state of insufficient polishing. Noun-on-noun modification is possessive, so we write “its” rather than “it.” “Its” refers to “his epic poem.”</p>

<p>This may be slightly confusing, as we often don’t explicate the possessor of gerundial states: Instead of writing, “Joe’s not going to the store this morning cost him his job,” we can write simply, “Not going to the store this morning cost Joe his job.” This crucial differentiation is that the pronoun serves to clarify in this question as would be unnecessary in that example: “Its” clearly refers to “his epic poem” rather than to the “poet Virgil,” whose reference would be achieved by the personal “his.” </p>

<p>As the sentence is, it is grammatically ambiguous that Virgil himself was not the one in need of polishing.</p>

<p>(This explanation may be found complicated. I can clarify if needed.)

The question you have posed in this thread is an excellent example of clearly ambiguous possession of the gerundial phrase. Whose seeing do we mean? Quincy’s, I presume, but this is not grammatically evident. Acceptable corrections include “Quincy’s seeing Derek again” and “Quincy would see Derek again.”</p>

<p>I foresee a potential point of confusion here: The syntactic conflation of participles and gerunds. Consider this form:</p>

<p>Though not seeing Derek again for five years, Quincy…
That the seeing is Quincy’s is unambiguous in this reformation of the sentence, whatever follows “Quincy.” The difference is that the modification is participial here: The subject of the clause following the phrase “Though not seeing Derek again for five years” is what that phrase modifies adjectively.</p>

<p>In the sentence as originally written, however, “before seeing Derek again” is gerundial and not so flexible. The syntax does not clarify the relationship, so we need to use a possessive modification or subordinate the clause.</p>

<p>(Again, I want to qualify: This description is potentially hard to understand. I don’t have a good sense of how much background knowledge on readers’ parts I am assuming. Please ask if further help is needed on this topic.)</p>