What I found in the forum of beat the gmat. Hope it will help. BTW, the following words from the Manhattan GMAT and VeritasPrep Vice President ------------------------- NO. The "progress" did not do the decimating, the "devastion and enslavement" did.
Here is my 2-cents for whatever it is worth.
A. Wrong specifically because of subject-verb agreement. Also, I don't like the omission of the article "the" when refering to the "devastation..". IMO, Columbus personifies a particular period of incidents of devastation, not devastation and enslavement in general.
B. Wrong because it implies that the native people did the devastating.
C. Wordy and awkward. Also, IMO, the use of the gerund connotes that the devastation is ongoing or recent.
D. Same reason as C.
E. IMO, this is the best choice. First, it has good s-v agreement. (the Bread and butter argument is not relevant because item that are considered to be one entity are treated as singular ("bread and butter IS preferable to bacon and eggs for some dieters, though the latter IS surely more popular", "ham and eggs WAS his choice for breakfast", "black and white IS the favorite color scheme of Soho yuppies". This does NOT apply to "devastation and enslavement", e.g., "the devastion and enslavement were widespread" BTW, while "bread and butter is my breakfast" sounds awkward, "bread and butter are my breakfast" sounds worse. Of course, please take this with a grain of salt as my bread and butter IS not SC.
Finally, since Columbus personifies a particular devastion and enslavement, I think the use of the definite article "the" is appropriate if not mandatory here.
看了老外的解释还是觉得坚定自己选E是正确的,这里至少明确几点:1.and连接的两个名词作主语时究竟是视为单数还是复数,要看主语在整个句子中的应用和具体语境:就像老外举得例子,bread and butter IS my favorite breakfast。这里用is是因为这里的bread and butter是被作为一个整体来吃的,谁也不会只吃bread or butter,所以可以视为整体;但是devastation and enslavement就不同了,他们中的任何一个都可以decimated native people,不一定要合起来才会发生作用啊,所以应该是独立的统一体,不能被视作整体。2.that 引导的定语从句是可以跨过中间的插入成分去修饰之前的先行词的,思来想去,这里还是devastation and enslavement decimated 更合理。3.定冠词the的使用,这里我也同意老外的说法,columbus不是personify the devastation and enslavement in general,而是只personify了某一时期的,这里不加the更显得不合适。 以上总结纯属个人观点,还请NN指点!
两个问题关于E选项 1.“devastation and enslavement”多余的the是否可以作为排除点? (个人觉得不能算) 2.in the name of process必须紧跟devastation and enslavement,所以that做跳跃修饰一点问题都没有,manhattan上也说“mission-critical”的修饰。不过我愚蠢的问题是that是可以修饰一起“devastation and enslavement”嘛?我怎么感觉是我SC的空白点。。。。