Barrons practice examination 1

[Guest]

Because of his broken hip, John Jones has not and possibly never will be able to run the mile again.

(a) Has not and possibly never will be able to run
(b) has not and possibly will never be able to run
(c) has not been and possibly never would be able to run
(d) has not and possibly never would be able to run
(e) has not been able to run and possibly never will be able to run

the answer is e. I put the answer c. Why can't it be the answer c????

[mridul12]

Because " has " is present tense, you do need "will" not the would .

" I am not grammar expert". Instructors can shed some more light on this issue.

Because of his broken hip, John Jones has not and possibly never will be able to run the mile again.

(a) Has not and possibly never will be able to run
(b) has not and possibly will never be able to run
(c) has not been and possibly never would be able to run
(d) has not and possibly never would be able to run
(e) has not been able to run and possibly never will be able to run

the answer is e. I put the answer c. Why can't it be the answer c????

[StaceyKoprince]

Would indicates a conditional tense - in this case, it means that he never would be able to run if some other (unspecified) thing were to happen first. That's not what the sentence is trying to say - he's already broken his hip. There's no "if" about it. Therefore, we have to use the standard future tense "will."

[CrackTheGmat]

I believe that the answer must be choice b.
It indicates clearly that he can't and won't be able to run in the future.
The use of "possibly will never" in B seems better than the awkward looking "possibly will never" as in A. I would appreciate if you could differentiate between these two usages.
The answer choice "e" seemed to be wordy and repeating a thing which seems already understood.

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Because of his broken hip, John Jones has not and possibly never will be able to run the mile again.

(a) Has not and possibly never will be able to run
(b) has not and possibly will never be able to run
(c) has not been and possibly never would be able to run
(d) has not and possibly never would be able to run
(e) has not been able to run and possibly never will be able to run

the answer is e. I put the answer c. Why can't it be the answer c????

[tim]

It really doesn’t matter whether E is awkward and repetitive since it is the only one that is grammatically correct..