ACT English : Preposition Errors
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Example Question #2261 : Correcting Grammatical Errors
Passage adapted from Stephen Leacock, The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada (1915)
When the Europeans came to this continent at the end of the fifteenth century they found it already inhabited through races of men very different from themselves. These people, whom they took to calling "Indians," were spread out, though very thinly, from one end of the continent to the other. Who were these nations, and how was their presence to be accounted for?
Choose the answer that best corrects the bolded and underlined portion of the passage. If the bolded and underlined portion is correct as written, choose "NO CHANGE."
found it already inhabited by races of men very different from themselves
NO CHANGE
found it already inhabited through races and men very different from themselves
found it already inhabited through races of men very different than themselves
found it already inhabited by races of men very different from themselves
The correct version of the sentence uses the preposition "by" to introduce the agent performing the action of the passive verb phrase. It is clear that "races of men" functions as the agent here, because flipping the sentence around to make it active communicates the same idea: "races of men very different than themselves already inhabited..."
The preposition "through" is not appropriate here, since it doesn't complement the participle "inhabited" but rather the whole clause, "they found it inhabited." This yields the implausible meaning "with help from races of men, they found the land inhabited."
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