OG52搞不懂C选项的请进

justsmile

52. To Josephine Baker, Paris was her home long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate, and she remained in France during the Second World War as a performer and an intelligence agent for the Resistance.

(A) To Josephine Baker, Paris was her home long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate,

(B) For Josephine Baker, long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate, Paris was her home,

(C) Josephine Baker made Paris her home long before to be an expatriate was fashionable,

(D) Long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate, Josephine Baker made Paris her home,

(E) Long before it was fashionable being an expatriate, Paris was home to Josephine Baker,

Rhetorical construction; Parallelism
This compound sentence (consisting of two independent clauses joined by the coordinating conjunction and) would be most clearly expressed if Josephine Baker were the subject of the ? rst clause since she is the subject of the second clause: Josephine Baker made Paris her home would clearly parallel she remained in France. The adverb clause long … expatriate is best placed before the main clause.
A To Josephine Baker … her is redundant and awkward; the subject of the ?rst main clauseis Paris rather than Baker.
B For Josephine Baker … her is redundant and awkward; putting two introductory elementstogether before the main clause is awkward.
C Inversion of the expected word order in to be an expatriate was unfashionable is awkward.
D Correct. The clearest, most economicalorder for this sentence is to put the adverb clause ?rst, and make Baker the subject ofthe ?rst main clause, parallel to she in the second.
E Being is awkward; Baker should be the subject of the ?rst main clause, parallel toshe in the second main clause.
The correct answer is D.


通过平行排除ABE之后很欢乐的选了C。。。= =
然后翻了很多帖子没找到合心意的解释。关于TO DO的表达为什么AWKWARD。
贴上一个我觉得让我比较满意的解释，不知道有没有在别的帖子里出现过。希望可以让和我一样纠结的小朋友们不那么纠结了~
When dealing with sentences starting with infinitives, it is preferable to use the "It + verb + subject complement + infinitive phrase" rather than "infinitive+ verb + subject complement". Unless, of course, the sentence starting with the infinitive an adage or the focal point of the sentence.

Hence,
"It is great to be here" is preferred to "To be here is great."
"It is dangerous to play with fire" is preferred to "To play with fire is dangerous".

Again, if the context required so, the non-"it" form may be used to emphasize the infinitive phrase.
Example:
To err is human.
To beat the GMAT was his only goal.
In these sentences, we want to emphasize the infinitive, hence the context makes it prudent to use the "Infinitive+verb+subject complement" form.
In the Josephine Baker sentence, "To be an expatriate" was not the focal point of the sentence. Hence it was preferable to use "It was fashionable...." in this case. I agree with Bill's comment as well that using "long before+ to be...." is inappropriate, and the verb+ing works better. Let me know what you think

原帖地址
http://www.beatthegmat.com/reversed-order-o-v-s-t115501.html#485542

FQY315

好帖！谢谢楼主解惑！而且标题清晰。

经你提醒，我翻回了Manhattan 198页，（6th edition）这是关于PLACEHOLDER “IT” 的语法点:
当不定式或者That 从句作主语时，会awkward, 需要改成“it”作形式主语引导的句子。

TO resist temptation is futile.------Awkward，although grammatically correct
It is futile to resist temptation.------Better

That we scored at all gave us encouragement.----Awkward
It gave us encouragement that we scored at all.----Better


还有一个搜到的小点分享：

Q：为何"long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate" 没有 modify the subject immediately following them (i.e,主语J.B)/和主语J.B没关系?

A (from an instructor) :

time references are exempt from the modifier restriction, and do no need to modify the noun immediately following them, or anything, for that matter. Even though a time reference may look like a modifier (in the sense that it is not a standalone sentence with a subject and a verb), it is NOT a modifier in that respect - it does not need to modify what follows it.

Thus, "Long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate, Josephine Baker...." is ok because the modifying clause is actually a time reference - it answers the question "when?", and thus does not fall under the modifier rules. Josephine Baker can follow such a time reference, because the time reference does not need to modify anything.

gmatclub instructor的解释（和上面一致）http://gmatclub.com/forum/to-josephine-baker-paris-was-her-home-long-before-it-was-64758.html
Modifiers about time periods tell us when the subject performed an action; they don't describe the subject itself. This modifier could theoretically be replaced by a modifier such as the following: In 1940, Josephine Baker made Paris her home. Here, the time period doesn't have to tell us more about the subject; it merely tells us about the time in which she performed a certain action. The modifier in option D functions in pretty much the same way: it tells us when Baker made Paris her home.

justsmile

然后我还有一个小疑问，之前帖子里有很多人说to be 选项awkward是因为它歧义，可以修饰JB.
我个人感觉没有这种歧义。希望各位大牛和各位同学可以指点下。到底这样会有歧义么？

wulakuka

to be an expatriate was fashionable
个人觉得不如用it形式主语好，OG中也说了原句这种inversion才是awkward的。
to do晃眼过去的确有修饰JB的歧义，但仔细看个人觉得没有，只能说明这种结构真的很不好。

wellsli

英文解释的好呀，这里就是it XX比 to好一点，如果强调，看来是要用to XX

MichelleLXN

请问那是不是说如果C改为JB madeParis her home long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate，就对了呢？

lemonsong

as if using "to be" to avoid the use of "it was." I think "before" is unclear without a tensed verb (i.e. before what happened?), and "to be" is the infinitive, not a verb in a tense

来源：www.manhattangmat.com

jypaul

thank you ....

mercury01

to be an expatriate 是個不定詞片語, 不定詞片語的詞性為adv或是adj, 應該不能當主詞!!

Enster

感谢9楼分享！瞬间清晰了！