Literary scholars analyzing a fifteenth-century manuscript recently made a fascinating discovery about the text's origins. When they compared the manu...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

• Literary scholars
  • analyzing a fifteenth-century manuscript
• recently made a fascinating discovery
  • about the text's origins.

• When they compared the manuscript to earlier works from the same region,
  • they found
    • that the author [?] extensively
      • from a now-lost philosophical treatise
        • written decades before.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading:

'Literary scholars analyzing a fifteenth-century manuscript recently made a fascinating discovery about the text's origins.'

So we have scholars who were studying a manuscript from the 1400s, and they recently discovered something about where this text came from.

The next sentence tells us what they discovered:

'When they compared the manuscript to earlier works from the same region,'

• They compared this 15th-century manuscript to other older texts from the same area

'they found that the author _____ extensively from a now-lost philosophical treatise written decades before.'

This is where we have the blank. Let's look at the choices:

• will have borrowed (future)
• borrows (present)
• would have borrowed (conditional)
• had borrowed (past perfect)

To see what works here, let's understand the complete timeline this sentence is describing!

Now let's really understand what this is telling us about the sequence of events:

• 'a now-lost philosophical treatise written decades before'
  • There was a philosophical treatise (a formal piece of writing)
  • It was written decades before the manuscript (so even earlier than the 1400s)
  • It's now lost

• 'the author _____ extensively from' this treatise
  • The author of the 15th-century manuscript borrowed ideas/text from this earlier treatise
  • This happened when the author was writing the manuscript (in the 1400s)

• 'they found'
  • The scholars discovered this borrowing
  • This discovery happened 'recently' (mentioned in the first sentence)

So the complete timeline is:

• EARLIEST: philosophical treatise written (decades before 1400s)
• EARLIER: author borrowed from it (in the 1400s when writing the manuscript)
• LATER: scholars found/discovered this (recently)

What do we notice about the verb tenses here?

• The scholars 'found' - this is in simple past tense
• The borrowing happened BEFORE the scholars found it
  • The scholars discovered something that had already happened centuries ago
  • We need to show that the borrowing happened earlier than the finding

When we have two past events and need to show which one happened first, we use the "past before past" form:

• The later past event uses simple past: 'found'
• The earlier past event uses past perfect: 'had borrowed'

So we need had borrowed (Choice D).

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Sequencing Past Events: Using Past Perfect for "Past Before Past"

When you're writing about two events that both happened in the past, and you need to show that one happened before the other, you use different tenses for each:

The pattern:

• Later past event - Simple past tense (verb-ed or irregular past form)
• Earlier past event - Past perfect tense (had + past participle)

This is sometimes called the "past before past" relationship (or past perfect in grammar terms).

Example 1:

• Timeline: First the team practiced for months, then they won the championship
• Sentence: "The team won the championship after they had practiced for months."
• won = simple past (the later event)
• had practiced = past perfect (the earlier event)

Example 2:

• Timeline: First she finished her degree, then she started the company
• Sentence: "She started the company after she had finished her degree."
• started = simple past (the later event)
• had finished = past perfect (the earlier event)

In this question:

• Timeline: First the author borrowed from the treatise (1400s), then scholars found/discovered this (recently)
• Sentence: "They found that the author had borrowed extensively..."
• found = simple past (the later event - the recent discovery)
• had borrowed = past perfect (the earlier event - the 15th-century borrowing)

The past perfect helps your reader understand the correct sequence of events when multiple things happened in the past at different times.