Susan,
You wrote:
FYI, I realize I never revealed the correct
answer to the SAT grammar question. It is D. Joanne (as a noun)
must be parallel to Heather (as a noun).
Unlike her sister Heather, who would always
put spiders safely outside if she found them in the house, Joanne’s
fear kept her from going anywhere near the creatures.
A. Joanne’s
fear kept her from going anywhere near the creatures
B. Joanne’s
fear is what kept her from going anywhere near the creatures
C. fear
is why Joanne had not gone anywhere near them
D. Joanne
was too afraid to go anywhere near the creatures
E. they
scared Joanne too much to go anywhere near them
I find D possible. I find BCE awkward, but I see nothing
wrong with the sentence as it is. Context would certainly help me to
choose between A and D, but I don’t understand why Heather and Joanne
must be parallel because they are both nouns, regardless of context, which
seems to be what the test question and identifying only D as correct imply.
If the topic of the paragraph is “fear,” then A works better—or
at least as well. Perhaps the passage will be about distinct phobias the
sisters have, or about fear as the reason for Joanne’s behavior rather
than, perhaps, her mother’s insistence. I’m sure we could
come up with other contexts as well, but the point is that A and D have
different structures because they have different meanings. This test
question strikes me as an instance of the sort of rigid rule, like the PAP we
discussed earlier in connection with this example, that should not be taught.
Even if we teach the rule and also teach that other structures work in
different contexts, we are still implying, and inviting our students to infer,
that there is a default correct structure.
I do understand that this is a standardized test question and
not a point you were trying to make, which leads to the broader question we’ve
frequently dealt with on this list, the poor level of grammatical knowledge
that leads teachers, editors, employers, and test developers to insist on rules
that aren’t.
Herb