同志们,有救了 我问了我大学的同学(Berkeley语言学的大牛),终于算是明白了! 问题: Help! Do we speak English this way??? Really confused~I found this question in GMAT official guide: The correct answer goes like this:A 1972 agreement between Canada and United States reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities are allowed to dump in to the Great Lake. Why do we use "are allowed" here? Souldn't we use "reduced the phosphate amount that municipalities had been dumping"? It makes more sense to me both in grammar usage and in the logic flow. What do you think? 答案:Your sentence is clearer, and it's true that the GMAT sentence is not a very good one, but they mean very different things--
"reduced the phosphate amount that municipalities had been dumping" implies that the 1972 agreement changed the amount that was already dumped (in the past).
"reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities are allowed to dump" implies that the agreement changed the rules for dumping; that is, before 1972, municipalities could dump as much as they wanted into the lake, but after 1972, they were only allowed to dump some certain amount. You could reword the 1972 sentence to be: "A 1972 agreement between Canada and United States reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities CAN LEGALLY dump in to the Great Lake."
Whereas your sentence could be reworded to be: "A 1972 agreement between Canada and United States reduced the phosphate amount that municipalities ALREADY DUMPED in to the Great Lake." 谢谢Karmel Allison同学救我出纠结的水火
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很明白,谢谢,^_^ |