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I have trouble understanding the usage of ものの in the following sentence:

病気が初期に見つかったからいい＿＿、もう少し発見が遅かったら命が危なかった。

A. とばかりに

B. かと思いきや

C. というものの

D. ようなものの

The right answer is D.

However, I think the answer should be C (according to this). I couldn't find any resources pointing out the usage of ようなものの.

Community
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reFORtEM
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    @Brandon The most natural one is just ものの. You have to choose one that doesn't change the meaning as long as possible. – user4092 May 17 '16 at 09:59

2 Answers2

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As @chocolate already cited in the comment, despite the looking, this question isn't actually asking about usage of "though", but knowledge of the idiom X からいい（ような）ものの Y, which roughly means "Just lucky that X, (otherwise) Y". I guess most native speakers would come up with this phrase when they've read to the part からいい.

For the possibility whether other choices could be true... well, purely grammatically speaking, C and B also have chances being "valid" (of course, only in very complicated situations that need a paragraph about the story so far). It however seems that they carefully chose wordings that none of other sound natural. If C were just ものの, the construction still works. Or it could be とはいうものの, in this case it'd mean "X, that said, Y" and at least make sense.

PS
If you filled in C, the sentence would be like:

Despite being said that it was okay because the disease was detected in early stage, my life would be threatened if the detection were just a little later.

or B:

Contrary to expectation that it was okay because the disease was detected in early stage, my life would be threatened if the detection were just a little later.

broccoli forest
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To me, D sounds more popular than C, but C is acceptable as well. In case of C, I prefer to say 病気が初期に見つかったからいいとはいうものの.

Yoichi Oishi
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