answer should be E
Explanation below
Dark Chocolate has been know to have great health benefits; in addition to its possibilities for lowering blood pressure, the ingredients of dark chocolate may also help it to serve as an anti-depressant.
A)in addition to its possibilities for lowering
>>
1) "its" refers to the subject of the sentence after ";"
Subject of the sentence is "the ingredients". So, we have a pronoun disagreement.
2) "possibility to" > "possibility for"
B)in addition to its possibilities to lower
>> the same as A.1)
C)besides the possibility that it lowers
>> 1) the same as A.1), "it" is unclear
D)besides the possible lowering of
>> This one is difficult. I could be wrong in terms of linguistic terminology .
Without "the", "lowering" could be either gerund ("nouny" or "verby") or participle I.
The difference between nouny gerund and verby gerund is in the fact that "nouny gerund" is modified by adjectives and can be used with article "the" while "verby gerund" is modified by an adverb and should not be used with articles.
With "the", "lowering" becomes "nouny gerund" with an adjective modifier "possible".
Technically, it could be correct.
However, the goal of the author is to make the first part of the sentence to be parallel with the the second part "may also help". Thus, we should have an action which is modified by adverb. The only possible option for this is to have verby gerund + adverb.
I am not completely clear in terms of linguistic terminology. Surfing the Internet, I found several approaches for dividing "gerund" into two groups: "nouny" vs "verby", "nominal gerunds or determiner gerunds vs sentential, also called VP gerundives or NP gerunds", "verbal" vs "non-verbal". But what I would like to point out is the difference which I see.
Example:
Fencing is fun. (verbal - an activity; replaceable by the infinitive "to fence")
The white fencing contributes to the neighborhood character (deverbal - a common noun, replaceable by other nouns like "bench")
E)besides possibly lowering
>> Again I am not completely sure in terms of grammar terms.
Here "lowering" is actually "verbal" or "verby gerund" or "sentential gerundive", so it should be modified by adverb.
This is a correct approach. So, it is our answer.
Last edited by
challenger63 on Tue Feb 12, 2013 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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