Paleontologists believe that the Clovis community used sophisticated t...
Paleontologists believe that the Clovis community used sophisticated tools to hunt such huge elephant-like animals as mammoths and gomphotheres in an era when doing that was almost impossible for lack of sharpening devices.
Meaning Analysis
- Paleontologists believe
- that the Clovis community used sophisticated tools to hunt such huge elephant-like animals as mammoths and gomphotheres in an era
- when doing that was almost impossible for lack of sharpening devices.
The sentence talks about a belief that paleontologists have. According to them, the Clovis community used refined tools to hunt huge elephant-like animals at a time when such a feat was impossible because there were no sharpening devices to sharpen these tools.
Error Analysis
In the phrase “doing that”, “that” is a pronoun and hence must refer to a noun or a pronoun. Here, “that” refers to the phrase “to hunt,” which denotes an action. This reference leads to a pronoun error.
Answer Choices
A
doing that was almost impossible
Incorrect:
This choice has an error pointed out in the error analysis.
B
it was not possible to do
Incorrect:
1) The reference of “it” pronoun may be interpreted in two ways, both of which lead to errors.
- “It” in this case is a placeholder pronoun and hence does not refer to any antecedent. It is no longer clear as to what was not possible to do, so this choice does not communicate complete meaning.
- “It” refers to “to hunt”, a reference that is not grammatically possible since a pronoun cannot refer to an action.
2) The word “almost” is missing in this choice, leading to a meaning error. In this context, note that it is illogical to say that this feat was not possible at all: the sentence already confirms that the Clovis community achieved the feat of using sophisticated tools for hunting. So, we need the word “almost” to show that this feat was an exceptional case of someone using sophisticated tools in this era.
C
it was almost impossible to do so
Correct:
This choice corrects the only error in the original sentence by replacing “that” with “so.” The phrase “to do so” correctly refers to the action denoted by “to hunt”.
D
it was almost impossible to do it
Incorrect:
The second “it” ungrammatically refers to the action denoted by “to hunt”. As in choice B, note that the first “it” in this choice is a placeholder and hence does not need an antecedent.
E
that was almost impossible to be done
Incorrect: This choice has the same “that” pronoun reference error that we spotted in Choice A.