Mauritius was a British Colony for almost 200 years

[aspirant2011]

Mauritius was a British Colony for almost 200 years, excepting for the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

(A) excepting for
(B) except in
(C) but except in
(D) but excepting for
(E) with the Exception of

[spoiler]OA: B vs C. Which one is better and why. If C then isn't comma + but construction is wrong????[/spoiler]

[Frankenstein]

Hi,

C - Mauritius was a British Colony for almost 200 years.
except in the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.
These are two independent clauses and hence correctly connected by comma + but.

B is incorrect because comma alone alone connect two independent clauses. We need comma+FANBOY.

[aspirant2011]

Hi,

C - Mauritius was a British Colony for almost 200 years.
except in the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.
These are two independent clauses and hence correctly connected by comma + but.

B is incorrect because comma alone alone connect two independent clauses. We need comma+FANBOY.

Ok so what I can make out from your above post is this that two independent clauses cannot connect through a comma though they can be connected through a but??????.......please correct me if I am wrong.......

[Frankenstein]

Ok so what I can make out from your above post is this that two independent clauses cannot connect through a comma though they can be connected through a but??????.......please correct me if I am wrong.......

Hi,
Minor correction: Two independent clauses can be connected using comma+but, not just but.

[aspirant2011]

Ok so what I can make out from your above post is this that two independent clauses cannot connect through a comma though they can be connected through a but??????.......please correct me if I am wrong.......

Hi,
Minor correction: Two independent clauses can be connected using comma+but, not just but.

Thanks a lot Frankeinstein...........

[TheGraduate]

Mauritius was a British Colony for almost 200 years, excepting for the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.
Consider:
(E) with the exception of

if we changed it to "but with the exception of", would the resulting sentence be acceptable?

I.e. would the following sentence be acceptable?
Mauritius was a British Colony for almost 200 years, but with the exception of the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

[GMATGuruNY]

Mauritius was a British Colony for almost 200 years, excepting for the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.
Consider:
(E) with the exception of

if we changed it to "but with the exception of", would the resulting sentence be acceptable?

I.e. would the following sentence be acceptable?
Mauritius was a British Colony for almost 200 years, but with the exception of the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

Generally, an introductory prepositional modifier serves as an ADVERB modifying the verb in the following clause.
Sentence above:
With the exception of the domains, the English language was never really spoken.
Here, the introductory prepositional modifier in red seems to modify spoken -- the verb in the following clause -- conveying the following meaning:
The English language was never really spoken with the exception of the domains.
This portion in blue does not convey a logical meaning.

OA: Except in the domains, the English language was never really spoken.
Here, the introductory prepositional modifier in red correctly modifies spoken, conveying the following meaning:
The English language was never really spoken except in the domains.
Here, the portion in blue conveys a logical meaning, expressing WHERE the English language was spoken:
It was spoken IN THE DOMAINS.

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Hello Everyone!

Let's tackle this question, one issue at a time, and narrow it down to the right choice! It's a pretty short sentence, so this should be a quick one to answer! To start, here is the original question with the major differences between the options highlighted in orange:

Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years, excepting for the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

(A) excepting for
(B) except in
(C) but except in
(D) but excepting for
(E) with the exception of

Okay, to be honest, you could highlight everything in each option because they're short and all different. However, if you look at the entire sentence, carefully, a major clue should jump out at you:

Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years, excepting for the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

We have two INDEPENDENT CLAUSES in here with a phrase separating them. Whenever we have two independent clauses in a sentence, what do we need to have to connect them? A conjunction or a semicolon!

Let's take a look at each sentence with the non-underlined parts worked back in. Make sure that there is some way to separate the two independent clauses that is grammatically correct (a conjunction or semicolon):

(A) Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years, excepting for the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

This is INCORRECT because there is no conjunction to connect the two independent clauses together. It's actually a run-on sentence with a modifier in between to throw you off! A modifier is not good enough to separate two independent clauses - it MUST be a conjunction or semicolon.

(B) Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years, except in the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

This is also INCORRECT because it doesn't have a conjunction to connect our two independent clauses! A modifier in between them isn't good enough!

(C) Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years, but except in the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

This is CORRECT! It uses the coordinating conjunction "but" to combine the two independent clauses together to create one complete sentence.

(D) Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years, but excepting for the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

This is INCORRECT. While it does use the conjunction "but" to combine the two clauses, we have an idiom problem. The phrase "excepting for" is not an acceptable idiom in English. "Except in" or "with the exception of" are the correct forms of this idiom.

(E) Mauritius was a British colony for almost 200 years, with the exception of the domains of administration and teaching, the English language was never really spoken on the island.

This is INCORRECT because it doesn't use a conjunction to connect the two independent clauses. It's one long run-on sentence with a modifier in between, which isn't good enough to work.


There you have it - option C is the correct choice! It's the only one that uses a conjunction to connect two independent clauses together AND doesn't have any idiom issues.


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

[vietnam47]

the intended meaning is
English is never spoken on the island . but English is spoken in the domains of teaching

we need a parallelism here, "on the island" and " in the domain". this is the reason why "except for" is wrong. we can not use
"for the domains of teaching". we need a good preposition to go with "domains".

"except for " appear in english but this phrase is equal to 'except".

so, we have to write "except for in the domains...".

am i correct?