<on account of><because of>

[sagar grammar]

Namaste,
Dear members.

I can't choose and prefer one of them in the given context I chose #1 but they said the answer is #2.
Could you help me get it?

- The national museum of history owns fiats of various vintages on account of having evolved into an indian touchstone.

1- on account of their having
2- because they have
3- because of having
4- No Improvement

What's wrong with #3 if #2 is okay?
And why not #4?

 

[london calling]

As far as I'm concerned the original sounds odd without 'their'. 1. and 2. sound fine to me. 3. sounds odd to me without 'their'. Regards no. 4: I don't agree with that because I don't think the original sentence sounds right.

Was this test set by native speakers of English? It isn't a very good one.

 

[sagar grammar]

Was this test set by native speakers of English?

No.

It isn't a very good one.

Yes.

 

[lingobingo]

In the exercise, the sentence is actually written with capitalisation and punctuation as follows:
The National Museum of History owns Fiat's of various vintages on account of having evolved into an Indian touchstone.

I'm not at all sure what it means, or why there's an apostrophe in Fiat's, or why they use a singular verb for the museum in the original then refer to it as "they" in the answers.

Awful!

 

[velisarius]

It's a horrible sentence, but we could deal with the grammar I suppose.

...on account of having evolved into an Indian touchstone.

There's no subject for "having evolved", so we ask ourselves "what evolved?"
#1 and #2 use "they/their", which could refer back to the vintage Fiats. I would say either of those choices would be fine - if the rest of the sentence wasn't so dire.

Perhaps the person who thought up this question regards "on account of" as a little too colloquial.