Writing Question from Blue Book Test #8

Test Preparation
1

<p>Page 847, question number 19:</p>

<p>George Thornton Emmons was one of a handful of ethnographers who
------------------------------A-------------------------------------</p>

<p>committed their life to studying the Tlingit culture of the
-----B-------C---------D------------------------------</p>

<p>Northwest Coast. No error
---------------------E---------------------------------------------</p>

<p>The correct answer is C, but my question is, how would you CORRECT the sentence?</p>

<p>1) George Thornton Emmons was one of a handful of ethnographers who committed their lives to studying the Tlingit culture of the Northwest Coast.</p>

<p>2) George Thornton Emmons was one of a handful of ethnographers who committed his life to studying the Tlingit culture of the Northwest Coast.</p>

<p>I'm particularly curious if number two is grammaticly correct because I'm almost certain number one is.</p>

2

<p>I don't believe #2 is grammatically correct because the antecedent of "who committed his/their life/lives" is "one of a handful of ethnographer*s*."</p>

<p>The trick is to remove the "extraneous" information and find out where the core of the sentence is. In this case, George Thornton Emmons is /one of/ a group of people who have done this thing. It's the group doing the thing that is important, grammatically, for the rest of the sentence, so the plural needs to carry through.</p>

<p>(I think. ;))</p>

3

<p>But isn't the pronoun "who" always singular?</p>

4

<p>The subject of the sentence is George Thornton Emmons, so you can completely ignore the phrase "was one of a handful of ethnographers who." You could also replace "george Thornton Emmons" with "he." The sentence then becomes "He committed his life to studying the Tlingit culture of the Northwest Coast."</p>

5

<p>the first correction is actually correct. </p>

<p>George Thornton Emmons was one of a handful of ethnographers who committed their lives to studying the Tlingit culture of the Northwest Coast.</p>

<p>i learned this in my lit and comp class this year</p>

<p>the "their" is referring to the group of people who commited their lives to studying, not just the "one".</p>

6

<p>Notice that I changed "their" to "his" in correction number two, tim.</p>

7

<p>"Their" is correct. However, "their life" is incorrect. It should be "their lives."</p>

<p>"Their" refers to the "handful of ethnographers" and thus should definitely be plural.</p>

8

<p>ExRunner, please--that's not correct at all.</p>

<p>"Of a handful of ethnographers" is extraneous information that should be ignored. The pronoun is referring to "one," which requires "his."</p>

<p>The correct answer is #2. There is no question about it.</p>

9

<p>why the dispute? does anyone know the real correction? xiggi?</p>

10

<p>sorry Knavish. exRunner is actually correct. If you don't believe me, see the official CB explanation which I've pasted below (official explanation for all the blue book tests are in a "book owner's" area of the CB online course). If you want "his life" to work in this sentence, you would have to set off the antecedent like this: "...Emmons, one of a handful of ethnographers, committed his life to studying..."</p>

<p>Here's the official explanation from CB:</p>

<p>Corrected Sentence: George Thornton Emmons was one of a handful of ethnographers who committed their lives to studying the Tlingit culture of the Northwest Coast.</p>

<p>Explanation for Correct Answer C : </p>

<p>The error in this sentence occurs at (C), where there is noun-noun disagreement. The singular noun "life" does not agree with the plural noun "ethnographers."</p>

11

<p>no way 2400! never would've thought that...</p>

12

<p>1) George Thornton Emmons was one of a handful of ethnographers who committed their lives to studying the Tlingit culture of the Northwest Coast.</p>

<p>who refers to ethnographers, not george thornton emmons. </p>

<p>another example:</p>

<p>john was one of the five billion people who ARE considered humans.</p>

13

<p>In this case,the author wants to imply that the ethnographers whom George is among committed their lives!
If you think George was one of a handful of ethnographers;AND he committed his life,the two phrases would not be connected.</p>

14

<p>It's gotta be "his" not "their" because of the word "who." The "who" is not underlined, so you know that it is correct and belongs, and the word "who" is supposed to correspond to "he" in the same way that "whom" corresponds to "him." If the sentence sentence was talking about the "handful of "ethnographers" as its subject, it should have been: "George Thornton Emmons was one of a handful of ethnographers THAT committed their lives to studying the Tlingit culture of the Northwest Coast."</p>

15

<p>uh, no. unless you think the College Board got it wrong too. see my earlier post. </p>

<p>Xiggi, if you're out there, can you put this one to rest?</p>

16

<p>The who refers to the antecedent "ethnographers" and so that phrase is modifying the ethnographers, who are plural. The plural pronoun "their" is required instead of the pronoun "his" as the latter is singular.</p>

17

<p>Whoever thinks it is "his" instead of "their" can go ahead and think that and then see what happens when you take the real SAT and it shows up.</p>

18

<p>normally, a sentence structure should be "he was one of the students who know" because there are many students and he is only part of the many students. however, in this question, the answer should be in singular form because "one of" refers to "handful", not "ethnographers".</p>

19

<p>But in this case, who refers to ethnographers, so it should be plural.</p>

20

<p>heca, just let it go. your previous post said it all. some people just won't listen and will have to learn the hard way.</p>