3. Greatly influenced by the Protested missionary Samuel Kirkland, the Oneida was the only one of the five-nation Iroquois League who sided with the colonists during the American Revolution.
A. was the only one of the five-nation Iroquois League who sided
B. was alone of the five-nation Iroquois League when they sided
C. alone among the five-nation Iroquois League sided
D. were the only ones out of the five nations of Iroquois League in siding
E. only of the five-nation Iroquois League had sided

ah yes, a tricky one.

'The Oneida' is plural, in much the same way as 'the English' or 'the French' would be plural (the French eat foods that are rather bizarre by the standards of most other countries). that observation knocks off choices a and b.

choice d is wrong because it is extremely, incredibly wordy. 'out of' is also a problem (because the gmat would only use 'out of' if it meant literally out of something, or in standard idioms like '3 out of 4'), but the wordiness of this choice should smack you in the face the second you look at it.

choice e is wrong because it uses the past perfect to refer to a single event. you need the simple past here (just 'sided', not 'had sided'), because there is no more recent time signal to justify the use of the past perfect for the 'earlier' event.

that leaves choice c, which uses the simple past correctly and is concise. (notice that singular/plural isn't an issue with that choice, because past tenses, with the exception of was/were, don't conjugate for number).

Thank you for the great explanation...

first off thanks for the great explanation.

I am just making sure of a great tool I learned along the way. The process of elimination heirarchy is 1) grammar 2.) meaning 3.) style. I dont like C's style but i t doesnt break any rules. ALso I could have gotten snagged because I treated "the Oneida" as a singular team but got lucky and still picked c because of the "other" grammar issues. Correct me if I am wrong.

p.s. new here and love it!

that's pretty much the hierarchy, although we like to address it with our catchy mnemonic, The Three C's: correctness #1, clarity #2, concision #3.

welcome.

wow Ron you are great. i have never seen such explanations on other sites.

Ron, dont you think choice C lacks a comma after "the oneida"?

Thanks

no, you can't put commas around "alone of the five-nation iroquois league". that's an essential modifier; it's indispensable to the meaning of the sentence, and is NOT a separate description of the oneida. in other words, you're not saying that the oneida were actually alone per se; you're just saying that they were alone in siding with the colonists. those are two very different things indeed.

if you wrote the version with commas - the oneida, alone among the five-nation Iroquois League, sided... - you'd have the following 2 undesirable changes in meaning:
(1) you have a separate description of the oneida as "alone among the five-nation iroquois league" - i.e., they're just "alone", in some sense that we don't even know.
(2) because the modifier is now nonessential (it's basically treated as just an extra random fact about the oneida), you now have a sentence that only tells you that the oneida sided with the colonists. the sentence no longer addresses the issue of whether the other 4 nations sided with the colonists.