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English Language
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Analyze the advanced syntactic structures, prepositional collocations, and idiomatic phrasal verbs in the following complex sentence:"Despite being urged to back down from his uncompromising stance, the senior diplomat abided by the treaty terms, insisted on a rigorous verification protocol, and ultimately dispensed off with the redundant administrative checks."Identify which of the underlined phrasal verbs or prepositional collocations contains a grammatical or idiomatic error according to standard English usage.
✓ Correct! Well done.
✗ Not quite — the correct answer is highlighted above.
Detailed Explanation
The error lies in the phrasal verb 'dispensed off' (Option D). The correct idiomatic phrasal verb meaning to rid oneself of or manage without something is 'dispense with', not 'dispense off'. In English grammar, prepositional selection and particle pairing in phrasal verbs are governed by strict lexical conventions rather than literal composition. For a comprehensive study of how relational words govern syntactic complements, refer to the Wikipedia Reference on prepositions and adpositions. The other underlined segments are correct: 'back down' correctly means to yield or withdraw a claim, 'abided by' correctly pairs with rules or agreements, and 'insisted on' is the standard prepositional collocation.
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