At Tuesday's press conference Ms. Franco

[AnupamaW260]

Hello Sir

I could not find discussion on below question in forum. If it is already there, then please re-direct me there.

At Tuesday's press conference Ms. Franco, who headed her country's antiterrorism committee for eight years, criticized airlines for simply banning items that had already been used in prior hijacking attempts without making a significant effort or anticipating the means of future attempts.

A) who headed her country's antiterrorism committee for eight years, criticized airlines for simply banning items that had already been used in prior hijacking attempts without making a significant effort or anticipating

B)the former head of her country's antiterrorism committee for eight years, criticized airlines that had banned items simply used in prior attempts at hijacking and had not made a significant effort to anticipate

C)the former eight-year head of her country's antiterrorism committee, criticized airlines simply for banning items that had already been used in hijacking attempts and made no significant effort in anticipating

D)who headed her country's antiterrorism committee for eight years, criticized airlines for simply banning items used in prior hijacking attempts and making no significant effort to anticipate

E)who had for eight years headed her country's antiterrorism committee, criticizing airlines that had simply banned items already used in previous hijacking attempts, made no significant effort at anticipating

Q > the former head of .......... for eight years --> is this construction always wrong? We cant use "former" and "time period" at same time?
Q>in A,B,C is past perfect incorrect?

Thanks

[Chelsey Cooley]

I wouldn't recommend basing a decision on something like this, because it's not a hard-and-fast grammatical rule. Even if it was, it's so specific that it'd be pointless to remember it.

In this specific case, 'former head for eight years' has a meaning problem. When you have both an adjective and a prepositional phrase modifying a noun, there can sometimes be strange ambiguities depending on which you apply 'first'. It's unclear whether she's spent eight years as the former head - that is, it's been 8 years since she quit - or whether, instead, she was the head for eight years before quitting. The latter is obviously what was intended, because it makes logical sense, but the grammar makes it seem like the former could be the case.

However, this will almost certainly not come up on your test, because it only happened here due to a strange combination of meanings. In general, just having an adjective and a prepositional phrase is perfectly clear and grammatical:

The ugly painting on the wall is bothering me.

So, it's not a grammar problem, in that there's no rule that says 'don't use an adjective with a prepositional phrase'. But in this case, it doesn't make sense.

[AmitG713]

Hi Chelsey,

Is the use of past perfect tense in options A, B, C and E correct? We do not have two related events in the past so we do not need to sequence these events.

Thanks

[ElaS308]

Hi Ron,

Can you explain what is wrong with option A?