confused between C and D. Please clarify.
- According to United States Air Force officials, a cannon shooting dead chickens at airplanes has proved helpful to demonstrate what kind of damage can result when jets fly into a flock of large birds.
(A) shooting dead chickens at airplanes has proved helpful to demonstrate- shooting does not go with demonstrate.
(B) shooting dead chickens at airplanes has proved itself helpful as a demonstration of -idiomatically wrong.
(C) shooting dead chickens at airplanes proves itself helpful as demonstrating.
(D) that shoots dead chickens at airplanes proves itself helpful to demonstrate-shoots goes with infinitive form to demonstrate.
(E) that shoots dead chickens at airplanes has proved helpful in demonstrating-Parallelism error
C has flaws:
1: shooting dead chicken verb is not clear it is referring that canon is shooting at present ,since its a part of study it should be in simple tense.
2:proves itself helpful is wrong . has proved helpful is correct as its a part of study that has proved succesful.
3:helpful to demonstrate ( showing what needs to be done) vs helpful in demonstrating( showing what is already done) latter is correct in this context..
Ankita has got it correct on 2 out of 3 counts. Great job!
However, “shooting dead chicken” is not a tense but it is a present participle modifier.
Same logic as:
Student taking computer engineering courses have applied for the position of a lab assistant.
Student -> subject
taking computer engineering courses -> modifies the subject
have applied for ….. -> predicate containing the verb
Arun
