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Difficulty: HardEliminating Redundancy

Although nineteenth-century philologists could find no written records of the ancient tongue, they successfully reconstructed Proto-Indo-European, which was a prehistoric ancestral language from which later modern languages descended from in the past.

Which choice is the most effective and concise alternative to the underlined portion of the sentence?

  1. A
    which was a prehistoric ancestral language from which later modern languages descended from in the past
  2. an ancestral tongue.Answer
  3. C
    an ancestral tongue. Which served as the prehistoric parent language.
  4. D
    an ancestral tongue, later languages descended from it.

Answer

The correct choice is the option that replaces the underlined text with 'an ancestral tongue.'
The correct choice is the option that reads 'an ancestral tongue.' This choice is grammatically correct and is the most concise way to express the relationship between Proto-Indo-European and later languages. It removes the unnecessary, repetitive descriptions of prehistoric time and descendant lineages present in the original sentence.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the underlined portion for redundant phrasing and grammatical errors.
The original phrasing repeats the idea of 'past' (using both 'prehistoric' and 'in the past') and the concept of ancestry (using both 'ancestral' and 'from which later modern languages descended'). It also mistakenly duplicates the preposition 'from'.
Identifying redundancies and errors helps in eliminating incorrect distractors.
2
Evaluate the other choices for conciseness and grammatical correctness.
The option containing 'an ancestral tongue.' is concise and correct. The option containing 'Which served as...' creates a sentence fragment. The option containing 'later languages descended...' creates a comma splice.
The correct ACT English alternative must be the most concise option that is free of grammatical errors.

Key Concept

Eliminating Redundancy
Estimated Time:1m 0s
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Topics

Eliminating Redundancy

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