Based on records from ancient Athens, each year young Athenian women collarborated to weave a new woolen robe that they used to dress a statue of the goddess Athena and that this robe depicted scenes of a battle between Zeus, Athena's father, and giants.

A. Same

B. Based on records from ancient Athens, young Athenian women had collaborated to weave a new woolen robe with which to dress

C. According to records from ancient Athens, each year young Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe that they used to dress

D. Records from ancient Athens indicate that each year young Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe with which they dressed

E. Records from ancient Athens indicate each year young Athenian women had collaborated to weave a new woolen robe for dressing

Can someone please walk me throught he errors in this problem?

Thanks!

B & E is out since it uses the past perfect tense.
D uses a non restrictive clause 'which', where as 'woolen robe' is restrictive.

D. Records from ancient Athens indicate that each year young Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe with which they dressed

We are down to the A & C and the only difference between the two is :


Based upon vs According to
I would go with A.

Thanks Ali. However, the answer is actually D.

Does anyone else have a better explanation?

Thank You.

Ahhh, agree..D is correct for parallelism- indicate that.....and that...

Choice D has nothing to do with restrictive vs. non-restrictive, because the 'which' in question is the object of a preposition. This 'which' is no more restrictive than is the 'which' in the following sentence:
'Here are the cities to which I've already travelled.'
Obviously, '...to which I've already travelled' is restrictive (the speaker isn't talking about all cities!), but it's TO which. That resolves this issue.

'Based on' just isn't right - it doesn't convey the right meaning. It makes it seem as though the women consulted the Athenian records for instructions on how to dress the statue. So that does in answer choices A and B.

I think both posters realize that E is wrong already, so no need for discussion there.

So it's C vs D.

Both OPENERS are fine ('According to...' and '...indicate that...'), so that split is a red herring. The problem with C, though, is the last part of the answer choice: 'that they used to dress.' All this means FOR SURE is that the robe was just a tool that the women used in the process of dressing the statue (maybe they used it to zip up the back of the statue's dress...??). Choice D, on the other hand, correctly conveys the idea that the women actually put the dress ON the statue.

How's that?

Thanks Ron. I appreciate your help.

Ron,

Don't you think C has a grammatical issue. "That" cannot be used here


Collaborated to weave a new woolen robe that they used to dress a statue of the goddess Athena and that this robe depicted scenes of a battle between Zeus, Athena's father, and giants.

the SECOND THAT--Referes to Robe so the sentence will read new woolen robe this robe depicted scenes of a battle between Zeus, Athena's father, and giants.

I generally don't get the meaning explanation easily as it's very tough to analyze and predict the meaning ..I think it's easier to apporach with a st of Rules.

Saurabh Malpani

Agree that it's better when we have actual rules and don't have to resort to meaning, which can get tricky! (We're not always that lucky, though - sometimes you will have to deal with meaning.)

I agree that you can argue with the second "that" for the reason you describe - so go ahead and use it to eliminate. You can also use Ron's method - whichever works best for you!

can anyone please explain the difference between based on and because of? When should we used based on and when because of.

Varun