vineetbatra wrote:Why is 5 wrong, here its is working as a placeholder for Star's.

OA is 4

nope. not valid.

in general, if you're going to use a possessive pronoun to refer to ANOTHER possessive, then the pronoun must come after the referent.
(note that this rule makes it really easy to fix sentences like #5; just switch the pronoun and the noun, and you're in business.)
in fact, now that i think about it...
if a possessive pronoun PRECEDES a possessive noun, then the assumption is that it DOESN'T stand for that noun.

simple example:
his mother talked with joe's father.
in this sentence, the implication is that someone else's mother - i.e., NOT joe's mother - talked to joe's father. if it were joe's mother, then the sentence would be written, much more naturally, as joe's mother talked with his father.

also, the tense of #5 ("would have caused") is incorrect.

this sentence is discussing the purely hypothetical result of a purely hypothetical situation, in the present. so you use the subjunctive with the hypothesis (the "what if" part) of the sentence, and "would" in the consequent.

"would have" is reserved for sentences that describe the hypothetical alternate outcome of some past event. you use the past perfect in the hypothesis, and "would have" in the consequent.
if she had told me about the traffic delays, i would have left home earlier.
(note: this is a form that most native speakers will SAY incorrectly; most native speakers will incorrectly use "would have" in BOTH parts of this sentence.)

hi -

"were it..." is another way of introducing an "if"-type clause.

in particular, "were it not for X, ..." is essentially equivalent to "if X did not happen/exist, ..."

therefore, the first part of the sentence sets up a hypothetical.

kamalsinghy wrote:Hi Ron,

Could you please shed more light on the first part of the sentence? It's not at all related to the correct option. I just wanted to know what the first part is playing the role in this sentence. I am not able to figure out whether it is modifier or conditional sentence. I am non-native speaker so wanted to know the essence of these kind of sentences.

Thanks.

bvn wrote:

lunarpower wrote:hi -

"were it..." is another way of introducing an "if"-type clause.

in particular, "were it not for X, ..." is essentially equivalent to "if X did not happen/exist, ..."

therefore, the first part of the sentence sets up a hypothetical.



Thanks.

Ron, i think that were it not = it were not . Could you explain more about this type!

there's really not a whole lot else that i can explain, other than what i wrote above:
were it not for X, ...
is equivalent to
if X did not happen/exist, ... or if X had not happened/existed, ...

for instance:
were it not for the penalty received by Smith in the fourth quarter, we would have won the game
is the same as
if Smith had not received the penalty in the fourth quarter, we would have won the game

--

you actually can't start a sentence with just "it were", since "it" is singular and "were" is a plural verb.
the only instance in which you could see that sequence of words is the hypothetical subjunctive, in which you have the construction if it were...

there's a good explanation of the hypothetical subjunctive in topic #1 on the following web page:
https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/grammar_subjunctive.html