Greatly influenced by the Protestant missionary Samuel

[RonPurewal]

This got me too. Is it common for GMAC to flout punctuation rules in correct answers?

never.
the punctuation in that sentence is, as always, perfectly correct.

more importantly—this exam DOES NOT TEST the presence/absence of punctuation!
...so, even thinking about that sort of thing is a complete waste of your time.

[Crisc419]

1. I have another aproach to eliminate D. "in siding" which modifies for "five nation" change the meaning of the sentence.

it doesn't modify "five nations"; rather, it modifies the entire clause that follows.** but, yes, you are correct: the meaning of this particular wording is incorrect in this case.

in general, the modifier "in VERBing", whether it's an initial modifier or a modifier that comes after the clause, should point to an action that is done in the process of, or as a component of, the action of VERBing.
for instance:
lesley used the internet a great deal in researching the subject of her report.
this meaning does not apply here, so the modifier is inappropriate.

--

** note that prepositional-phrase modifiers, if not set off by commas, can modify EITHER the preceding noun / noun phrase OR the entire action of the preceding clause (equivalent to "modifying the clause itself").
for instance:
i read the book on the train --> this prepositional phrase modifies the ACTION "read the book", and/or the CLAUSE "i read the book" (not much distinction between these two interpretations; modifying an action and modifying a clause are basically the same thing).
i read the book on the table --> this prepositional phrase modifies the NOUN "book".
since both of these are generally possibilities, you need to use intuition / common sense to figure out which one applies in the problem at hand.

are there other mistakes in choice D? Because after reading you post, i still cannot understand why "in siding..." is wrong.

[RonPurewal]

if someone "did X in doing Y", this means that X was something that happened during the process of Y.
e.g.,
Two members of the team were injured in training for the upcoming game.

choice D is incorrect because it's nonsense. "the Oneida were the only ones..." is not something that happened during the course of "siding with xxxx".

[NicoleT643]

Hi Ron, I have a question on the usage of opening modifier.
"Greatly influenced by the Protestant missionary Samuel Kirklan" modifies the Oneida or modifies the main subject and verb?

In your previous posts, you said:
* the opening modifier describes a reason why the oneida took a certain side in the war.
* if the following sentence has "sided" as its verb, then it makes sense.
* if the following sentence has "was/were (alone)" as its verb, then it doesn't make sense.
For me, it means that the opening modifier "Greatly influenced by Protestan" modifies the main subject and verb.

I used to think that opening modifier modifies only the main subject, however, after reading your comment to this question, I am no longer sure about it, please help me clarify my question, thank you very much.

[RonPurewal]

it's both.
the modifier has to describe the following subject, but it ALSO has to relate in some way to the whole idea of the following sentence.

(to describe ONLY a noun WITHOUT any relevance to the larger idea of the sentence, you'd use comma + "who"/"which".)

[jabgt]

"the oneida" is totally plural, like "the english" or "the french".

it just so happens that you can write a nice compact version of the sentence that doesn't use a pronoun.

Dear Ron Sir,

After studying all posts of the this problems and checking "among" in dictionary, I still have difficulty to understand the construction of correct answer Choice C, since Choice C is analogous to "The American people alone among the 12 countries of America Continent sided ..."I see "X among Y " X,Y are not necessarily apple to apple, but "People among the certain countries" ? It's quite weird to me. Because I am not native-speaker?

Let me put it this way, "People among the certain countries" this construction is as correct as "with expanses of green suburban neighborhoods, the deer population has ..." -- because this is best choice or as correct as we generally think?

Thank you!

[RonPurewal]

written language ≠ spoken language. even if you were a native speaker of english, that sentence would still "sound weird" to you if you weren't thoroughly familiar with formal writing.

"sound weird" is irrelevant. don't think about it. don't try to use it to eliminate things. if you try to do that, you'll just be making random guesses.

[jabgt]

Dear Gurus,
May I ask whether choice A itself is inherently inferior on the ground of the construction "the only one of XXX who/that ..." -- does this construction lead to ambiguity regarding whether "who/that" modifies "the only one" or "XXX"? Although I understand generally it depends on the context and common sense to tell such "who/that" clause modifier the former or the latter part, I'm not sure whether "the only one of XXX who/that ..." is regarded as ambiguous. Thank you!

I apologize in advance, if this question is too dumb -- I guess so, since this Prep problem has been raised for 10 years here, while no one else has ever had doubt about choice A itself.

[jabgt]

Dear Gurus,
May I ask whether choice A itself is inherently inferior on the ground of the construction "the only one of XXX who/that ..." -- does this construction lead to ambiguity regarding whether "who/that" modifies "the only one" or "XXX"? Although I understand generally it depends on the context and common sense to tell such "who/that" clause modifier the former or the latter part, I'm not sure whether "the only one of XXX who/that ..." is regarded as ambiguous. Thank you!

I apologize in advance, if this question is too dumb -- I guess so, since this Prep problem has been raised for 10 years here, while no one else has ever had doubt about choice A itself.

Dear Gurus,

In case that my above question makes no sense, could you please let me know? I'm not sure whether my question is missed out, simply I should wait longer, or just it doesn't raise a good enough point?

Thanks a lot!

BR

[RonPurewal]

hi,
we answer questions in order from oldest to newest.

the INTENDED MEANING of these sentences should NEVER be "ambiguous". you should always be able to figure out what the sentence SHOULD say, by using a combination of context and everyday common sense.

__

about the construction in your question, read here:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... tml#p99243