怎么解决名词化的动名词

New theories propose that catastrophic impacts of asteroids and comets may have caused reversals in the Earth’s magnetic field, the onset of ice ages, splitting apart continents 80 million years ago, and great volcanic eruptions.

(A) splitting apart continents

(B) the splitting apart of continents

(C) split apart continents

(D) continents split apart（B）


(E) continents that were split apart


The word splitting must function as a noun to parallel the other items in the noun series of which it is part: reversals, onset, and eruptions. In B, the best choice, the definite article the clearly signifies that splitting is to be taken as a noun. In A, splitting introduces a verb phrase that breaks the parallelism of the noun series. In C, the verb split is similarly disruptive. Choice D, grammatically vague, resembles C if split is a verb and E if split is an adjective. In E, continents illogically replaces the splitting in the series: although the impacts in question may have caused continents to split, they did not cause those continents that were split apart 80 million years ago to materialize.


尽管这道题可以用平行方式做，但是倘若如果不知道splitting 可以作名词的话，这道题做起来会有障碍，可是要找到所有可以名词化的动名词(不是动名词都能做名词——薄冰语法书上说：有的动名词只有名词的特征而没有动词的特征，这种动名词唤作名词化的动名词,可见一斑），又不现实，所以是否有好的办法解决这种题？