Because Miranda, the smallest moon of Uranus,

[davetzulin]

- 'because of' is sketchy; it suggests indirect causation, while the clear meaning is that gravitational attraction was directly responsible

i thought "because of" is the same as "because", except one precedes a clause and the other precedes an object.

I slept because I was tired
I slept because of my fatigue

or are both cases of "indirect causation"?

what is direct causation then?

[mrinal.singh06]

i thought that the correct answer E is a run on sentence.

"Because Miranda, the smallest moon of Uranus, has a large number of different surface features, including craters, mountains, valleys, and fractures, some astronomers suggest that at one time repeated impacts broke the surface apart"

because joined this part of the sentence separated by comma and i thought the last part of the sentence is an independent sentence

[tim]

- 'because of' is sketchy; it suggests indirect causation, while the clear meaning is that gravitational attraction was directly responsible

i thought "because of" is the same as "because", except one precedes a clause and the other precedes an object.

I slept because I was tired
I slept because of my fatigue

or are both cases of "indirect causation"?

what is direct causation then?

i would say the first one is direct causation and the second is indirect..

[tim]

i thought that the correct answer E is a run on sentence.

"Because Miranda, the smallest moon of Uranus, has a large number of different surface features, including craters, mountains, valleys, and fractures, some astronomers suggest that at one time repeated impacts broke the surface apart"

because joined this part of the sentence separated by comma and i thought the last part of the sentence is an independent sentence

the "because" in front of the first clause makes it dependent. a runon sentence requires two insufficiently separated independent clauses..

[priv1t]

(A) repeated impacts broke the surface apart...
(B) repeated impacts on the surface broke it apart...

Dear Instructors,
just want to make sure that "impacts" cannot break "the surface/it"(logically incorrect), right?

(C) through repeated impacts that the surface broke apart, after which the fragments subsequently rejoined by

- the wording suggests that the surface broke apart by itself (although perhaps because of the urging of the impacts) - doesn't have anywhere near as much directness as it should

(C) through repeated impacts that the surface broke apart ...
(E) ... , after which the fragments rejoined through

Besides, does the word "through" stand for an indirect/direct causal relationship?
It seems that "through" conveys an indirect causality in (C), while a direct causality in (E).

Thanks in advance!!

[tim]

there is nothing wrong with impacts breaking the surface apart. A and B are wrong for other reasons. C has its own reasons for being wrong; if you are looking at direct versus indirect causality, you are trying too hard to analyze the meaning when you should be focusing on grammar..

[wangyinwei_2005]

(D) the surface broke apart with repeated impacts, after which the fragments having rejoined through

- 'with' is incorrect
- 'having rejoined': same problem as in choice b

Hi, dear instructors:
sorry to bump up a old thread, but I have a question about the "with" in D. I know that 'with' is inferior to 'as a result of', but I cannot distinguish the meaning of these two.(in some posts on other website, I learned that "with" can be used to illustrate the cause-effect relationship)
so, I do want to know, if we use 'with' here, what does this sentence mean? what's the difference between "the surface broke apart with repeated impacts" and "the surface broke apart as a result of repeated impacts".
seek for your help; thank you in advance!

[RonPurewal]

what's the difference between "the surface broke apart with repeated impacts" and "the surface broke apart as a result of repeated impacts".
seek for your help; thank you in advance!

the first sentence is basically nonsense.
to see why, it helps to have a comparable example that's actually sensible, so, here you go:
The surface broke apart with a loud bang.
--> you see how this works; the "with", in this context, indicates an aspect of the breakage process itself. that doesn't generalize to the "repeated impacts" thing, since those aren't part of the breakage process"”they are what caused that process.

[SudiptaB23]

Hi Ron,

Sentence: In pitch dark, John was not able to locate the glass jar on the ground and broke it into pieces, after which he started shouting for help.

In the aforementioned sentence, if I go by your logic that "preposition + WHICH" plays the same modifying role as does plain "which" (namely, it modifies the noun preceding the comma), then syntactically the sentence is correct (there is a noun 'pieces' preceding the comma) but from meaning perspective the sentence doesn't make sense ('after pieces' is meaningless, 'which' is replaced by the noun 'pieces' preceding the comma)

Am I missing anything?

Please let me know.

Thanks,
Sudipta.

[RonPurewal]

that's an accurate understanding (that would be an incorrectly written / absurd sentence).