In 1860, the Philological Society launched its effort

[RonPurewal]

Hi -- after reading the thread above, I still have a question.

I can see why "would take" and "was" is needed to differentiate two events at different times.

That being said, the option that uses "took more than 60 years" and "dictionary was born". Doesn't the 60 years in itself indicate a different time/event? Is that not enough?

this sentence describes the very beginning of the effort, so it makes no sense to express "took" in the past.

in other words, in this context "took" is inherently nonsense; that judgment isn't relative to any other verb.

[thanghnvn]

we have two ways to make preceding/following clear

did +had done
did+ would do

both cases above can show the sequence of actions/tenses. the difference between two cases is that

in the first case, we know that both actions did happen

in the second case,we only know that the action shown by "would do" happen after the action shown by "did". we do not know whether the action shown by "would do" did happen. it is possible that the action shown by "would do" have not happened

do you agree with me on this point?

[RonPurewal]

i don't really understand what you are asking. can you provide some specific examples, please? thanks.

[HanakoK713]

Hi,

I still don't get why D is the correct answer here.

I chose B because
i) I thought "was born" meant "came out".
ii) I thought "took 60 years" and "was born" happened at the same time. (It took 60 years to complete, and the Oxford English Dictionary was born.)

I found it odd to use the same simple past tense to express actions happened after the earliest event (" the Philological Society launched..") . But I remembered one sentence from SC book.

"The band U2 WAS just one of many new groups on the rock music scene in the early 1980s, but less than ten years later, U2 HAD fully ECLIPSED its early rivals in the pantheon of popular music."

Although the action "had eclipsed" is not the earliest action in the above sentence, using past perfect tense here is correct because "had eclipsed" is the earlier of the two actions in the independent clause. Considering this rule, I thought answer choice B was correct as the earlier action appears in the different independent clause.

Please tell me where did I go wrong?

Thanks.

[YANFEIG811]

Just my two cents, when reading this question, I saw the act of the dictionary being born as occurring after its completion. The time it takes to create is like the gestation period of the dictionary, and once it is complete it is then published or "born."

Any thoughts?

I have the same thought. Did you get the answer?

[shainis857]

Why does the "project" have to be the launch of the dictionary? Can the launch of the dictionary not be different from the "efforts" /"project"? I am thinking of a situation where someone was running a project (e.g. the "effort" could be getting permissions or verification for including some words in the dictionary) to launch of the dictionary. This made me think that the completion of "project" marked the launch of the dictionary. If my understanding is not flawed then wouldn't it be fair to say that completion of project & launching of dictionary happened at the same time?

Can someone please help me understand this?

[RonPurewal]

this exam will NEVER contain any trick questions!

the only actual undertaking mentioned in the sentence is the compilation of the dictionary. thus, that MUST be the identity of the "project".
if there were some other "project" that simply wasn't mentioned, then the problem would be deliberately misleading/disingenuous/"tricky"... which will never happen on this exam.

[HuG857]

Perfect explanation！

[RonPurewal]

thanks.