Question #N1169
The director of the museum, a passionate advocate for the preservation of endangered languages, spoke to a group of students and scholars about the importance of documenting the languages that are slowly disappearing from the world. "To understand a culture," she explained, "you need to know the language that its people speak."
Which choice best combines the sentences at the underlined portion to create a grammatically correct and stylistically effective sentence?Correct Answer is: B
The underlined portion of the sentence currently has a comma splice. The comma is not enough to connect two independent clauses. Choice B corrects the comma splice by using a relative clause to combine the two clauses. The relative clause "that its people speak" modifies the noun "language" in the first clause. Choice A is incorrect because the phrase "the language its people speak" is missing a relative pronoun, creating a fragment. Choice C is incorrect because the past tense verb "spoke" does not fit the context of the passage. Choice D is incorrect because the comma after the word "language" does not connect the two clauses correctly.