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Again confusion betweent the 2 options Experts help needed

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Again confusion betweent the 2 options Experts help needed

by [email protected] » Fri Dec 07, 2012 6:36 am
In his eagerness to find a city worthy of Priam, the German archaeologist Schliemann cut through Troy and uncovered a civilization a thousand years older as was the city Homer's heroes knew.

[A] older as was the city Homer's heroes knew

more ancient than the city known to Homer's heroes

[C] older than was the city known to Homer's heroes

[D] more ancient of a city than Homer's heroes knew

[E] older of a city than was the one known to Homer's heroes


The given OA is B. But what is wrong with C.

I thought that 'older than' is a simple and concise term than 'more ancient that'.

The rest of the sentence remains the same.


Could kindly anyone of you help me in this question.


Thanks & regards,

Amit
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by ceilidh.erickson » Fri Dec 07, 2012 7:23 am
You've correctly identified that we're looking at comparisons here, and we want to compare this other civilization to the city that Homer's heroes knew. Whenever we have a comparison, we have to ask - are we comparing comparable things?

(A) Here we're comparing "civilization" to "city," which is what we want, but clearly the "as" makes no sense here. We need "than."

(B) Here we have "than," and we're comparing "civilizations" to "city," so keep this in the running.

(C) We have a "than," which is good, but what are we comparing? When we introduce the word "was," it changes what we're comparing! We could say "the civilization was older than was the city known..." Then we're not just comparing nouns, we're comparing the clauses. But since "civilizations" doesn't have a verb, we can't add a verb for "cities."

(D) "more ancient of a city" is a colloquialism that is idiomatically incorrect.

(E) Ditto "older of a city"

So, you're probably right that "older than" is more concise that "more ancient than." But remember - concision is a preference, not a grammatical rule. Make sure you deal with all the grammar rules first, and save concision decisions for last. ("Concision Decisions" would be an awesome band name, right?). Grammatically, we can eliminate everything but B.

Hope this helps!
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by eaakbari » Sat Dec 08, 2012 10:09 am
B & C are the only viable options.

But C expresses the Idiom incorrectly

X older than Y - Correct

is the correct form of the idiom. But C fails to place a noun (Y) after older than but rather substitutes it with 'was' which makes it awkward.

As Ceilidh rightly said so 'save concision decisions for last' and I also agree with the band name bit. XD
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