Complete the cleft sentence emphasizing the true catalyst of historical change:
It was not military conquest _____ catalyzed the Renaissance, but the revival of classical scholarship and humanist inquiry.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: D. that
- Step 1: Identify the rhetorical cleft construction: the sentence follows the classic it-cleft structure "It was [focused element] that [clause]" used to emphasize a specific agent or cause.
- Step 2: Determine the relative connector: standard prescriptive English grammar requires the complementizer "that" in it-cleft sentences, particularly when introducing defining relative focus clauses.
Answer
that.
Why not the others: "which" is considered non-standard or stylistic inferior in cleft sentences compared to "that"; "who" is used exclusively for personal human antecedents, whereas "military conquest" is an abstract noun; "what" functions as a nominal relative pronoun ("that which"), which is grammatically redundant here.
Practise more Complex Syntax, Subjunctive, and Inversion.
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