<p>The roman poet virgil is (highly esteemed A)
Today for his epic poem , the aeneid, (yet B) on his deathbed he himself (sought C)
To prevent its publication on the grounds ( of not being D)
Sufficiently polished.<br>
The answer is D
Please explain</p>
<p>to prevent “from” or " against " not “of”</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.)</p>
<p>Your other recent thread deals with precisely the same issue, worth citing for example here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1347694-writing-help.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1347694-writing-help.html</a></p>
<p>Although I am not the OP, I just wanted to clarify this. It’s not because of the lack of “from” in the sentence, but because “of not being” does not clearly signify what the gerund, “being” is referring too? @silverturtle</p>
<p>^ Yes, you have it right.</p>