108. Reporting that one of its many problems had been the recent extended sales slump in women’s apparel, the seven-store retailer said it would start a three-month liquidation sale in all of its stores.

(A) its many problems had been the recent

(B) its many problems has been the recently

(C) its many problems is the recently

(D) their many problems is the recent

(E) their many problems had been the recent

Choice A is best: the singular pronoun its agrees in number with the singular noun referent retailer; the past perfect verb form had been is used appropriately to refer to action completed prior to the action of the simple past tense said; and the adjective recent correctly modifies the noun phrase extended sales slump. The adverb recently in choices B and C distorts the meaning of the sentence by illogically suggesting that what was recent was only the extension of the slump, and not the slump itself. In choices D and E, the plural pronoun their does not agree with the singular noun retailer.

本题中，应该用recent还是用recently仍然不明白。

解释中说应该用recent修饰slump，但我认为recently extended来修饰sales slump也言之有理啊。另外可以两个形容词（recent和 extended）同时修饰一个名词而中间不需逗号或and的吗？