by RonPurewal Wed Dec 09, 2015 11:15 am
D is also, more generally, a nonsense construction. i'll try to explain, but note that i'm going well beyond the actual scope of this exam here.
↓↓↓ YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THINGS LIKE THIS ON THE EXAM ↓↓↓
'few' is a negative construction. in this sense it works exactly like 'no'.
my point will probably be easier to understand if i use examples with 'no' instead.
consider the following statement. (i have no idea whether this is actually true; that's not the point here.)
No animal has a green tongue.
this is a negative statement.
because it is fundamentally a statement about something that DOES NOT exist, the MAIN SENTENCE must contain a negative construction.
e.g.,
No animal has a green tongue.
In no species of animal is the tongue green.
You cannot find an animal with a green tongue.
the main point is that you CANNOT write a sentence like this:
*In no animal, the tongue is green. (NONSENSE SENTENCE)
this isn't the easiest thing to explain on a forum, but i think you can see the problem here: the MAIN SENTENCE here is "the tongue is green", which is an affirmative sentence. it's no longer a negative sentence.
thus there are 2 problems:
1/ the sentence has lost its fundamental meaning,
2/ "in no animal"—something that's clearly central to the meaning of the sentence—has been added as an inconsequential modifier. (when a modifier is separated by commas, the sentence should retain the same fundamental meaning if it is taken away.)
hopefully this makes sense.
but even if it doesn't, that's still okay, because /1/ you can eliminate the choice for reasons you already understand, and /2/ YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THINGS LIKE THIS ON THE EXAM.
↑↑↑ YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THINGS LIKE THIS ON THE EXAM ↑↑↑