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appositives

by voodoo_child » Mon Jul 04, 2011 9:35 am
In 1850, Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on Women, arguing in a treatise for women to have egual political and legal rights and for changes in the married women's property laws .

(A) arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights
(B) arguing in a treatise for equal political and legal rights for women,
(C) a treatise that advocates women's equal Political and legal rights
(D) a treatise advocating women's equal political and legal rights
(E) a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women

OA is E .

Here's what I could find on the internet. In fact, some of the reasons are conflicting :)

a) - OA says - arguing in is incorrect. it doesnt talk about ",-ing" participial form. I am not sure why it's incorrect.
b) do
c) parallelism error - advocating doesnt work with "for changes" as per OA -> no reference to appositive
d) do
e) correct. "argued for" is correct.

My question - I am not able to understand why a or b is incorrect. I chose E for a different reason.

I have heard people say "arguing in the room" Is that incorrect?

Just to add another question - the subject of "arguing" is Lucretia and not "Discourse on Women", if I am not wrong.
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by rishijhawar » Mon Jul 04, 2011 9:58 am
I choose E because "a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women" correctly modifies 'Discourse on Women'. Per the Modifier rule, a modifier must be placed very close to word it modifies. This rules out A and B. C and D are out because of Comparison error: the non-underlined part contains "for changes in the married women's property laws", so the underlined part must also have clause containing the word FOR to make both sides comparable.
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by voodoo_child » Mon Jul 04, 2011 10:27 am
Here's another interesting question :

At the next meeting, the manager will announce that she will raise the salary of the employee who sells the most merchandise next month, which is a component of a system that will try to incentivize the sales department to work as hard as the advertising department does.

(A) month, which is a component of a system that will try

(B) month, a component of a system that tries

(C) month, a component of a system trying

(D) month as a component of a system to try

(E) ANSWER
month as a component of a system that will try


In the construction "the manager will announce that she will do X ...employee, who ...month, a component that"
, I am not able to find the noun phrase modified by "a component". What should be the scope for finding the modfied element ? I mean - should it be "who....month" OR "that.......employee, who.......month" OR the entire sentence starting from "the manager.........." this example is really confusing.

Let me think of an example:

The price of an Apple rose by 50% last year and then slashed by 90% early this year that was well above that of last year, a situation ....

I have tried to come up with an example, which may not be correct. Nonetheless, I am tryign to understand what will "a situation .... " modify ? Rise? Fall? What should be the scope of modification in a typical sentence as stated above ?

Thanks
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by Ashley@VeritasPrep » Mon Jul 04, 2011 8:26 pm
voodoo_child wrote:In 1850, Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on Women, arguing in a treatise for women to have egual political and legal rights and for changes in the married women's property laws .

(A) arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights
(B) arguing in a treatise for equal political and legal rights for women,
(C) a treatise that advocates women's equal Political and legal rights
(D) a treatise advocating women's equal political and legal rights
(E) a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women

OA is E .

Here's what I could find on the internet. In fact, some of the reasons are conflicting :)

a) - OA says - arguing in is incorrect. it doesnt talk about ",-ing" participial form. I am not sure why it's incorrect.
b) do
c) parallelism error - advocating doesnt work with "for changes" as per OA -> no reference to appositive
d) do
e) correct. "argued for" is correct.

My question - I am not able to understand why a or b is incorrect. I chose E for a different reason.

I have heard people say "arguing in the room" Is that incorrect?

Just to add another question - the subject of "arguing" is Lucretia and not "Discourse on Women", if I am not wrong.
The problem is not with "arguing" itself but more with "in a treatise." This construction makes it weirdly sort of sound as though the treatise was distinguishable from the Discourse on Women, when in fact the Discourse on Women *was* the treatise. The reason the construction makes it sound as though the treatise should have been a separate thing from the discourse is that you expect to be getting some new information at that point in the sentence -- for instance, I might say either

In 1850, Lucretia Mott entered the public literary scene, arguing in a treatise that ... or
In 1850, Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on Women, arguing in strong, thoughtful language that...

In both of these cases, the participial modifier actually modifies; it doesn't just reiterate what's already been said. But to publish the Discourse on Women really WAS to argue in a treatise, so that modifier just becomes redundant once you realize that it's not providing any new information.

So, either a participial modifier OR an appositive would work fine to extend this sentence, and the choice just comes down to the other characteristics of the answer choices. "Advocate" is transitive, i.e. it takes a direct object with no preposition intervening, so that gets rid of C and D, as you say.

"Arguing in the room" is fine, and yes, the subject doing the arguing is Lucretia.
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by Ashley@VeritasPrep » Tue Jul 05, 2011 6:54 pm
voodoo_child wrote:Here's another interesting question :

At the next meeting, the manager will announce that she will raise the salary of the employee who sells the most merchandise next month, which is a component of a system that will try to incentivize the sales department to work as hard as the advertising department does.

(A) month, which is a component of a system that will try

(B) month, a component of a system that tries

(C) month, a component of a system trying

(D) month as a component of a system to try

(E) ANSWER
month as a component of a system that will try


In the construction "the manager will announce that she will do X ...employee, who ...month, a component that"
, I am not able to find the noun phrase modified by "a component". What should be the scope for finding the modfied element ? I mean - should it be "who....month" OR "that.......employee, who.......month" OR the entire sentence starting from "the manager.........." this example is really confusing.

Let me think of an example:

The price of an Apple rose by 50% last year and then slashed by 90% early this year that was well above that of last year, a situation ....

I have tried to come up with an example, which may not be correct. Nonetheless, I am tryign to understand what will "a situation .... " modify ? Rise? Fall? What should be the scope of modification in a typical sentence as stated above ?

Thanks
Good question! I don't know that there's any limit to how far back an appositive can stretch to hook onto its subject. It can modify any noun phrase (and, for instance, phrases that begin "that...," as in "she announced [that he had arrived]," are noun phrases. If you had two totally separate noun phrases, an appositive placed after the second one wouldn't stretch back to the first one and ignore the second, but quite frequently you have embedded noun phrases, and in that case I think the appositive can stretch back to any one of those layers.

So, if I've got "the manager will announce that she will raise the salary of the employee who sells the most merchandise next month," I've got embedded noun phrases: The manager will announce [that she will raise [the salary of [the employee...]]]. So I could go down any of several paths from that point. I could say:

The manager will announce that she will raise the salary of the employee who sells the most merchandise next month, an announcement that should be met with great excitement. (In this case, I'm modifying "that she will...")

The manager will announce that she will raise the salary of the employee who sells the most merchandise next month, a salary that has previously been capped at $15/hr. (In this case, I'm modifying salary)

The manager will announce that she will raise the salary of the employee who sells the most merchandise next month, one worker who will certainly be worth the higher pay. (In this case, I'm modifying employee)

...

So I think you can get away with pretty much anything on that front, as long as there's no totally distinct (non-embedded) noun phrase intervening and as long as you introduce the appositive in a way that clearly indicates what it's modifying. In your apple sentence -- and often, when the cue word is "situation" or "fact" or something of that nature -- the whole independent clause is being modified, e.g. "The toddler has written all over the walls in crayon, a fact about which I'm very displeased" --> that whole independent clause = the "fact."

Best,
Ashley Newman-Owens
GMAT Instructor
Veritas Prep

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