KAPLAN CAT3 语法 ---关于divorce的用法

ScarlettDeng

The much-maligned royal family member, having come off a recent divorce to an immensely popular woman, reassured his family that he would not remarry without public support.

A The much-maligned royal family member, having come off a recent divorce to an immensely popular woman
B The much-maligned royal family member, having recently divorced an immensely popular woman
C The royal family's much-maligned member who had come off of a recent divorce of an immensely popular woman
D The royal family's much-maligned member, who has recently divorced an immensely popular woman
E The much-maligned royal family member, because of a recent divorce to an immensely popular woman

正确答案：B

Read the Original Sentence Carefully, Looking for Errors:

The underlined portion, as written, uses the phrase "come off a recent divorce," which is a circuitous（迂回） way of saying “recently divorced.” The lack of concision is a style problem. It also uses the incorrect idiom "divorce to." When divorce is used as a noun, as it is here, the idiom is "divorce from." If divorce is used as a verb, then Person X divorces Person Y, with no preposition after the verb.

Scan and Group the Answer Choices:

(A), (C), and (E) use prepositions after "divorce": (A) and (E) use the preposition "to," and (C) uses "of." (B) and (D) do not use a preposition after "divorce." Also, (A) and (C) use the informal "come off ... divorce," while the other choices express this idea differently.

Eliminate Wrong Answer Choices:

Eliminate (A), (C), and (E) for the reasons identified above. Concentrate on the differences between (B) and (D).

Eliminate (D). It unnecessarily introduces the present perfect tense with "who has recently divorced." The non-underlined verb "reassured" is in the past tense and requires a matching past tense verb in the underlined portion.  

When two past tense verbs appear in a sentence, the event that occurred in the more distant past takes the past perfect tense. (B) repairs the "divorce to/divorce from" issue by changing the word to a verb and not using a preposition after it, and this choice uses the past perfect tense "having ... divorced"  when referring to the earlier event. It fits perfectly into the original sentence and is the correct answer.  

TAKEAWAY: A verb outside the underlined portion cannot be changed, so other verbs need to place the action in the correct respective time frame.


这个题目的注释说了
divorce是及物动词，不需要介词
divorce用作名词时，可以与from搭配，divorce from


想问下关于divorce还有哪些用法吗？