Question 239·Medium·Form, Structure, and Sense
When studying migratory patterns, ornithologists often highlight the endurance of the Arctic tern, _____ annual journey from pole to pole spans roughly 44,000 miles.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
For questions like this, first decide what job the missing word must do: show possession, act as a verb, or connect a description to a noun. Check if the sentence after the blank is meant to be a separate sentence or a clause describing the noun before the blank. Eliminate contractions that expand to full verb phrases when you clearly need possession, watch out for double possessives (e.g., "of which its"), and avoid choices that turn the sentence into two complete thoughts separated only by a comma (comma splices).
Hints
Check the role of the blank
Focus on the words immediately after the blank: "annual journey from pole to pole spans roughly 44,000 miles." What is this phrase describing, and how should it connect back to "the Arctic tern"?
Possession or action?
Ask yourself: does the blank need to show who owns something (possession), or does it need to act as a verb phrase like "who is" or "who has"?
Watch the sentence structure
If you plug in a choice, does the sentence become two complete sentences incorrectly joined by just a comma? Or does it remain one sentence where the part after the comma is a description of "the Arctic tern"?
Step-by-step Explanation
Understand what the blank is doing
Read the sentence with a pause at the blank:
"When studying migratory patterns, ornithologists often highlight the endurance of the Arctic tern, _____ annual journey from pole to pole spans roughly 44,000 miles."
The words after the blank, "annual journey from pole to pole spans roughly 44,000 miles," are giving extra information about the Arctic tern. The blank must introduce this description and connect it back to "the Arctic tern."
Decide what kind of word is needed
The phrase after the blank talks about an "annual journey" that belongs to the Arctic tern. So the missing word must:
- Refer back to "the Arctic tern"
- Show possession of "annual journey"
- Smoothly connect the description to the noun it modifies without creating a new, separate sentence
This points to a possessive form that can also act as a connector (like in a relative clause).
Test each choice for meaning and sentence structure
Plug each option into the blank and check both grammar and meaning:
- A) "who's" means "who is" or "who has." Substituting gives "the Arctic tern, who is annual journey..." or "who has annual journey..." which is ungrammatical.
- B) "of which its" is a double possessive: "of which" already shows possession, and "its" does again. "the Arctic tern, of which its annual journey..." is redundant and wrong.
- C) "its" alone gives "the Arctic tern, its annual journey from pole to pole spans..." This makes two full ideas (“ornithologists highlight…” and “its annual journey spans…”) joined only by a comma, which is a comma splice/run-on.
Only one choice both shows possession and correctly turns the rest of the sentence into a dependent clause modifying "the Arctic tern."
Choose the possessive relative pronoun
The word that shows possession and introduces a clause describing a noun is a possessive relative pronoun. Using it, the sentence becomes:
"When studying migratory patterns, ornithologists often highlight the endurance of the Arctic tern, whose annual journey from pole to pole spans roughly 44,000 miles."
This is grammatically correct, clearly shows that the journey belongs to the Arctic tern, and avoids any comma splice. So the correct answer is D) whose.