<p>Q:</p>
<p>The department of transportation (a. has introduced) pictorial traffic signs because drivers can react to (b. this) (c. more quickly) than (d. to verbal ones). No Error</p>
<p>Answer is b</p>
<p>Why is it B and what is the name of this grammar rule?</p>
<p>Its choice (B) because the word “this” does not clearly specify if its the department of transportation or the traffic signs. Maybe in real life this is acceptable but for the SAT this is incorrect.
I believe this is an ambigous pronoun error type.</p>
<p>Are you sure this is ambiguous pronoun error? </p>
<p>thanks for the response</p>
<p>Well yes because “this” is a demostrative pronoun and in the sentence above its ambiguous because it doesn’t have a clear meaning of what its referring to in the sentence.</p>
<p>Another example of this error type would be:
“The supervisors told the workers that they would receive a bonus.”</p>
<p>Note that the pronoun “they” in this case is ambiguous because it does not CLEARLY specify who are “they” , because it can be either the supervisors who are going to receive a bonus or the workers.</p>
<p>That’s not correct. It’s quite clear what ‘this’ is referring to, but it should be ‘them’. “Pictorial traffic signs” is plural, so you need a plural pronoun.</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s because it should be “these” and not “this”</p>
<p>I’m not sure this question was copied correctly.</p>
<p>Almost everyone has given a different answer…</p>
<p>It should be ‘them’ rather than ‘this’ because ‘pictorial traffic signs’ is a plural subject and needs a plural pronoun </p>
<p>I personally call this subject-pronoun agreement error</p>
<p>@bioninja Try saying the sentence out loud in your head with ‘these’ and you will know why ‘them’ is a better option</p>
<p>Posterguy, everyone except for Salami809 has given the correct answer.</p>
<p>@MeIsHM lol I guess you are right…</p>
<p>ITS NOT AMBIGUOUS</p>
<p>‘TRAFFIC SIGNS’ is plural, there is more than one. So ‘THIS’ does not work as this is singular.</p>
<p>It needs to be them or these.</p>