Sentence Correction

akhp77 wrote:First you should understand absolute modifier and then you can understand option C better. In fact, you should be able to distinguish between absolute and appositive phrase.

Please refer Stacey and Ron's explanation for C.

akhp77 wrote:C:
Sound can travel through water for enormous distances, its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by boundaries in the ocean created by water layers of different temperatures and densities.


Why does Sound travel through water for enormous distances?
Ans => because its acoustic energy was prevented by X

"its acoustic energy" is a noun and "prevented ....." is a noun modifier.

Noun plus noun modifier is the structure of absolute phrase.

Sound can travel through water for enormous distances because its acoustic energy was prevented.

"its acoustic energy" modifies to previous clause.

Please correct me if anything wrong here.

sumanr84 wrote:kevincanspain,

I really appreciate your help in resolving queries on BTG. However, what I have noted is that you usually give a thinking answer for a problem that leaves most of us unclear about the correct answer for the problem at hand.

Its good that you promote us to think and derive the answer ourselves but if you could provide an absolute answer for the problem at hand, at least in Spoiler that would really help us !!

Stacey Koprince wrote:Received a PM asking me to respond.

This is an OG question, so I can't discuss it directly, but I can discuss a similar sentence that I make up...

The debate here is between these two "types" of sentences:

1) Light can travel through space for huge distances, its energy prevented from dissipating by X.

2) Light can travel through space for huge distances, preventing its energy from dissipating by X.


Let's start with #1.
The word "prevented" can be a regular conjugated verb or it can be a participle. If it's a participle, it can be part of a verb form (with another conjugated verb before it) or it can indicate a modifier. Examples of the two verb options:

"prevented" as regular conjugated verb: I prevented my paper from blowing away.

Conjugated verb + "prevented" participle: My paper was prevented from blowing away. (The paper was prevented by me.)

Now, what is the difference in those two sentence constructions? The first is active; the second is passive. In the first, the subject (I) is doing the action (prevented). In the second, the subject (paper) is having the action performed on it (I'm still doing the preventing, not the paper).

Could I write: "The paper prevented from blowing away" - meaning, the paper prevented itself from blowing away? Nope. The paper can't prevent itself from blowing away. If we want to use "the paper" as the subject, we have to write this in passive voice.

So. Energy prevented from dissipating by X. Is that a sentence? Can the energy prevent itself from dissipating? No, again. If we want to use "energy" as a subject and have an independent clause here, we have to write this in passive voice, which would be "the energy WAS prevented from dissipating by X."

What does that mean? That word "prevented" is not a conjugated verb or part of a conjugated verb form in this sentence. Therefore, it's a modifier and the stuff after the comma in C is NOT an independent clause - it's the rest of the modifier.

Now, #2.
2) Light can travel through space for huge distances, preventing its energy from dissipating by X.

We have <independent clause>, <-ing modifier>. The -ing modifier needs to modify the preceding clause. Also, the modifier needs to follow from the independent clause; that is, something in the independent clause needs to be doing this "preventing." What is doing this preventing?

Argh. It's the stuff after the word "by." That's not part of the independent clause. Nothing in the independent clause is responsible for "preventing the energy from dissipating." This is a misplaced modifier.

If it's too confusing to understand based on the example above, try this:

Paper can fly through the air for huge distances, preventing it from falling by gusts of wind.

What's preventing the paper from falling? The gusts of wind. But the "preventing" has to refer to the stuff *before* the comma. Nothing *before* the comma is actually preventing the paper from falling.

Stacey Koprince wrote:

had the second sentence been "Light can travel through space for huge distances, preventing its energy from being dissipated by X" would it have been correct? Pl. comment

I'm a little confused. You said "HAD the second sentence been" (the above). But that IS exactly what the second sentence was in my example. Everything after my second example (in my previous post) explains why that one was wrong.

Did you mean to edit that second sentence in some way but forgot to do so?

uwhusky wrote: And wow, did you know that the OG actually said that NYT's grammar is incorrect?!

uwhusky wrote: Going beyond that, my question is, what's the difference between A and D's usage of "participle" without subject and "subject" + "participle"?

Is A always wrong because it is lacking a noun, which is required in the absolute phrase?

uwhusky wrote: Is there anything else wrong with A?