aps_asks Wrote:Ron ..Ur explanation is good....But How to think of such a thing during time pressure....
RonPurewal Wrote:kramacha1979 Wrote:Since this a ,<conjunction>, don't we need the sentence after and to be a independent clause?
ah, i see what you're asking. but, no, frustratingly enough, this is not a case of "X + , + conj + Y".
basically, you are wrongly interpreting that comma as part of the structure of the overall "skeleton" of the sentence, when it in fact belongs to the appositive modifier.
i'll illustrate with a color code:
The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern california, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.
those commas belong to the orange modifier, not to the overall structure of the sentence. if you remove the orange modifier, those commas will disappear right along with it.
in general, i don't really think that this sort of thing is tested on the gmat.
i do know that the gmat absolutely requires the comma after "Y" in the list "X, Y, and Z" -- and that this particular distinction has shown up in several official problems, much to the chagrin of students who grew up learning british english -- but that's the only one of these comma-placement issues that i've so far seen actually tested.
gauravtyagigmat Wrote:I agree that its framework..feet is a modifier
because
had it been a clause .It would have been connetcted by coordinating conjunction or subordinating conjuction.
My question is what this modifier is modifying.
if i go by meaning it appears to me that it is modifying "The single-family house constructed by the Yana" ,but a noun modifier should touch the noun it is modifying.
Even if we consider one of the exception when noun modifier is allowed not to touch noun it is modifiying
1.When a short non essential phrase intervenes
"The single-family house constructed by the Yana"
is followed by a non essential phrase
"a Native American people who lived in what is now northern california"
and thereafter "was conical in shape" comes and then comes our modifier(its framework..)
so please make it clear what this modifier(its framework..)
is modifying
also is it modifying "conical in shape"?
RonPurewal Wrote:gauravtyagigmat Wrote:I agree that its framework..feet is a modifier
because
had it been a clause .It would have been connetcted by coordinating conjunction or subordinating conjuction.
My question is what this modifier is modifying.
if i go by meaning it appears to me that it is modifying "The single-family house constructed by the Yana" ,but a noun modifier should touch the noun it is modifying.
Even if we consider one of the exception when noun modifier is allowed not to touch noun it is modifiying
1.When a short non essential phrase intervenes
"The single-family house constructed by the Yana"
is followed by a non essential phrase
"a Native American people who lived in what is now northern california"
and thereafter "was conical in shape" comes and then comes our modifier(its framework..)
so please make it clear what this modifier(its framework..)
is modifying
also is it modifying "conical in shape"?
These kinds of things describe the subject of the preceding sentence. They should also have some sort of logical connection to what is stated in that sentence.
E.g.,
Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.
--> Luisa's teeth are chattering. The relationship to being outside in the cold is obvious.
Even if there's another noun, the phrase still describes the subject.
Roberta listened to her daughter, tears forming in her eyes.
--> Tears are forming in Roberta's eyes (because of what her daughter is saying).
But in this modifier(its framework....pine) we do not have a helping verb to make complete verb.
will it be correct if i replace as high as with to a height of in option D
RonPurewal Wrote:Gaurav, the problem is that you're exerting way too much effort trying to produce a formal analysis of this modifier -- at the expense of understanding how it works.
The point is to recognize correct constructions, and to know what they look like and how they work.
It doesn't matter whether you can label them with the right terminology. (I don't even know what "absolute phrase" means.)
So, if you see this ...
Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.
... and you know that it's correct,
then you can see this ...
The house was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with xxxx
... and know that it's also correct.
In each case, the pronoun ("her" / "its") refers to the subject of the preceding part, and the modifier has an essential and easily discernible relationship to that preceding part.
That's about all I can tell you here. But it's the pattern recognition -- not the grammatical labels -- that is the point. The terminology is irrelevant. (You can call this modifier a "pink flamingo" if you want, as long as you know how it works and what it looks like.)
ex
An overwhelming proportion of tigers work in America, many
of which are in circus
many....circus is a modifier phrase
but it seems to me a complete sentence.
RonPurewal Wrote:I don't know these terms (phrase, subordinate clause, etc.), so I can't really help you with them. As I mentioned above, the point is (a) to recognize correct constructions, and (b) to know what they look like and how they work.ex
An overwhelming proportion of tigers work in America, many
of which are in circus
many....circus is a modifier phrase
but it seems to me a complete sentence.
The entire reason for the existence of "which" is that it's NOT the subject of a complete sentence. Instead, it creates a modifier. (It's impossible to create a complete sentence whose subject is "which".)
"Many of them are in the circus" is a complete sentence. "Many of whom" and "many of which" are modifiers.
gauravtyagigmat Wrote:what is a complete sentence.?
RonPurewal Wrote:wow, that's a bear of a problem. geez louise.
you are misreading the parallelism. you are correct that 'banked with dirt...' has to be parallel to something. unfortunately, though, the 'something' in question happens to be 'overlaid with slabs...'.
in other words, 'banked with dirt' applies to the framework of poles, not to the house itself.
but you have identified the other problem: there is a meaning shift. if you say 'dirt as high as four feet', you're implying that most of the dirt is well below the four-foot level, but that four feet is the maximum height. the correct answer choice, on the other hand, states that the height of the dirt bank is consistently three to four feet. remember, if the meaning of the original sentence is intellligible, you are not allowed to change it - a principle that decides the meaning in this case. (the meaning in choice d isn't absurd, but it conflicts with what you're told in the original sentence.)
a final problem with choice d is that the phrase 'as high as' should be followed by one value, not a range.
some of our players weigh as much as 300-325 pounds --> bad phrasing
some of our players weigh as much as 325 pounds --> good phrasing