sight/site/cite

[tzfujimino]

Hello, everyone.

This is part of the test questions that appeared on an entrance exam of a university in Japan:

1. Mount Fuji is certainly a wonderful sight.
2. You can make an argument for anything if you know which author to cite.
3. They considered Mount Fuji but decided it wasn't the right site.
4. To shoot properly you need to look along the sight.
5. He decided to cite his novel in the past.

Students are asked to choose the wrong sentence from among the five choices.
It's quite hard for me to pick one, because all of them look grammatical to me!

I have no problem at all with #1, #2 and #3.

I first thought #4 was wrong.
I thought, 'Aha! "look along the sight" should be "look at the sight", but ... hang on ... "sight" is different from "target".
"look along the sight" does make sense in this context!'

Then I came to the conclusion that #5 is wrong.

Am I correct?

Thank you.

 

[MikeNewYork]

I don't see anything wrong with 5. For me, 4 is the answer.

 

[Tarheel]

Well, they are all grammatical, but #4 is wrong because you don't look along a sight
You look through a sight. (The sight is at the end of the barrel.)

 

[Tarheel]

I looked it up on the Internet, and both "look along the sight" and "look along the sights" are used. So maybe none of them are wrong

 

[tzfujimino]

Ah, I see!
So, the "sight" in #4 means a device which looks like a telescope, right? I didn't know it was called a "sight".
I thought "look along the sight" meant something like "look straight ahead".

Thank you, Mike and Tarheel.

 

[tzfujimino]

I thought there might probably be something wrong with the usage of "cite" in #5.

"He decided to cite a phrase/sentence from his past novel" was the alternative I came up with.

Is #5 correct as it is?

Thank you.

 

[BobK]

I think you‘re right. It is possible though not very likely to cite someone else‘s novel. I‘m not sure how one could decide to cite anything in the past (unless one decided, in the past, to cite it). But you can‘t site a novel either. What you CAN do is "situate it in the past". I think the examiner is hoping to tempt examinees to decide that site is right and cite is wrong. If so they‘re wrong, because neither word is right. ;-)

b

 

[TheParser]

***** NOT A TEACHER *****

My teachers taught me to eliminate the obviously wrong answers:

1. "I cited my novel in the past." Of course, not.

2. "I sighted my novel in the past." Of course, not.

3. "I sited my novel in the past." Well, ...

"to site" (transitive verb): "to place in or provide with a site; locate." (The Random House College Dictionary, first copyright 1968)

 

[emsr2d2]

I would say #5 is wrong but not because it uses the wrong option between sight, site and cite but because it should use "set". 1-4 are all OK for me.

 

[MikeNewYork]

As "in the past, he decided to cite his novel" it works.

 

[Skrej]

I'm guessing what happened, is that they meant for #5 to be wrong, as per emrs post #9, but they accidentally created a sentence which works in some contexts, as per Mike's post #10.

As Mike said, #5 can work, but it does seem a little unnatural.

 

[Peedeebee]

I think #5 is the one because you could have been caught out thinking "cite in the past = site (set ie: situate/create setting/create location) in the past.

 

[Tarheel]

I would say #5 is wrong but not because it uses the wrong option between sight, site and cite but because it should use "set". 1-4 are all OK for me.

Thanks, emsr2d2! I thought the student was supposed to pick the one that used the wrong homophone. What a tough test!

 

[Tdol]

What a tough test!

Would the examiners have passed? ;-)