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From studies of the bony house of the brain, which is the cranium, located in the back of the skull, come what scientists know about dinosaur brains.

1. From studies of the bony house of the brain, which is the cranium, located in the back of the skull, come what scientists know about dinosaur brains.
2. The knowledge that scientists know about dinosaur brains comes from studies of the bony house of the brain, located in the back of the skull, that is, the cranium.
3. The knowledge of dinosaur brains that scientists have come from studies of the bony house of the brain, which is located in the back of the skull and is called the cranium.
4. What scientists know about dinosaur brains comes from studies of the cranium, the bony house of the brain located in the back of the skull.
5. Located in the back of the skull is the cranium, the bony house of the brain, and it is from studies of this that scientists know what they know about dinosaur brains.

What does this question test?

This question tests your ability to identify the subject-verb pairs and ensure that they agree in number.  In addition, this question tests your understanding of the modifiers.

What does the sentence mean?

Scientists know about dinosaur brains from the studies of certain part of brain. This part of brain is called cranium and this part is located in the back of the skull.

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What are the errors in the original sentence?

• Clause 1:  From studies of the bony house of the brain
• Clause 2:  which is the cranium, located in the back of the skull,
• Clause 1:  come what scientists know about dinosaur brains.

Clause 1 is written in inverted form.  The subject appears after the verb.  The subject in this clause is a clause itself – What scientists know about dinosaur brains.  The verb is – come.  The object is – from studies of the bony house of brain.  Since clause as subject is always singular, the verb – come should be comes – singular.  Thus this sentence has SV – Number error.

In this sentence the modifier “which is the cranium”, modifies “bony house of the brain”, since noun modifiers can modify slightly far away noun if certain conditions as discussed in Modifiers – Relative Pronoun Concept are met.  In this sentence all the conditions are met as shown below:

• It does not make sense to say that “brain, which is cranium”.
• The important information – “of brain” modifies “bony house” and hence cannot be placed anywhere else.
• It makes complete sense to say that bony house of brain is cranium.

Thus, there is no modifier error.  However, this sentence has awkward construction with regards to this modifier – it would be better to say “cranium, which is the bony house of brain” because the modifier typically contains descriptive information.

Answer Choice Analysis

Choice B – This choice has three errors as noted below.

• Redundant – “knowledge that scientists know” is redundant expression
• Punctuation error – “that is, the cranium” = The verb is unnecessarily separated from the object by comma
• Modifier “that is, the cranium” distorts the intended meaning = Per the original sentence, cranium is the bony house of brain. However per this choice, cranium is the back of the skull.  This is because “that” refers to ‘back of the skull’.

Choice C – This choice has SV number disagreement error.  The SV pair – “knowledge-come” does not agree in number.

Choice D – No Errors

Choice E – This choice has three errors as noted below.

• Redundant – “know what they know” is redundant expression
• Wordy & Awkward construction – “it is from studies of this that…”
• Pronoun – This is used as a pronoun to refer to cranium.  We cannot use “this” in this role without adding a noun after it for example, “this part” would  have been correct in the context of this sentence.

Thus, choice D is the correct answer.

What are the key take-away messages?

1. In some sentence, the SV pair is inverted.  In such sentences care should be taken to identify the SV pair and ensure they agree in number.
2. Watch out for redundancy in sentences.

Where can you find more information?

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