Sentence Correction

Hi,

As a baby emerges from the darkness of the womb with a rudimentary sense of vision, it would be rated about 20/500, or legally blind if it were an adult with such vision.



When a baby comes out from the darkness of the womb, it has a rudimentary sense of vision that would be rated about 20/500. If an adult had such a vision, he would be considered legally blind.



In this thread (and in previous threads as well), the confusion is regarding the role of the prepositional phrase "with a rudimentary sense of vision", whether it modifies the "womb" or "the baby".

To understand this, first we need to know what the prepositional phrases modify. Prepositional phrases can modify nouns as well as verbs. Especially the modifiers starting with "with" are very versatile. They can modify any aspect of the sentence which is entirely dependent on the context of the sentence.

Let us take an example here: After five days, John came out of the dark cave with a shining diamond.
I'm quite sure no one will have any difficulty in understanding the logical intended meaning of the sentence here. It is very obvious from the sentence that it is John who came out with a diamond. Here "with a shining diamond" is not modifying "the dark cave". So what is the prepositional phrase modifying here? The prepositional phrase is modifying the verb in this sentence. How did John come out? He came out with a diamond.

In the very same way, in this OG sentence, "with a rudimentary sense of vision" cannot modify the preceding noun "womb" because logically it just does not make any sense. We all know that womb can never have any sort of vision whatsoever. One way to find out what the modifier is modifying is to ask question to which the reply should be that modifier. For example, we must ask how the baby emerges from the womb. The answer is exactly the same prepositional phrase - The baby emerges from the womb "with the rudimentary sense of vision". And this logically makes sense also. So the modifier stood as an answer to what aspect of the question? As to how the baby emerged. Hence, this prepositional phrase "with the rudimentary sense of vision" is modifying the verb "emerges" in this sentence.

Hope this helps.
Shraddha

Hi pinchharmonic,

Consider this sentence: John played cricket with a tennis ball. Here there is no question that the prepositional phrase "with a tennis ball" is modifying "cricket", right? So no ambiguity here. Now per your suggestion, if we write the sentence, it will read as: John played cricket and with a tennis ball.

The question is - do we really need parallelism here? You are right in saying that the entities in a parallel list have the same level of importance which we do not need here. What we want to stress on here is that although John played cricket, he used a ball that is used for some other sport and not for cricket. The sentence intends to highlight the fact the ball John used is not meant for cricket but for tennis.

In the original sentence also, if we make both the entities parallel, then we are giving equal importance to baby's emerging form the dark womb and the baby doing so with rudimentary sense of vision.

Because the sentence emphasizes on this "rudimentary sense of vision" that a child is born with, the remaining portion of the sentence talks about its implication on adults. In order to maintain this emphasis, the sentence is written as: A baby emerges from the darkness of the womb with a rudimentary sense of vision that would be rated about 20/500; an adult with such vision would be deemed legally blind.

Hope this helps.
Shraddha

Hi pinchharmonic,

My bad. I did not review the post before submitting it. I apologize for the mistake there. Yes you are correct in saying that "with a tennis ball" is referring to the entire clause in that it is referring to the verb of the clause. It is indeed referring to the "how" aspect of the clause. This is what I had meant when I was composing my reply.

The very same way, in the original OG sentence "with a rudimentary sense of vision" is referring to the "how" aspect of the baby emerging from the womb because it does not make sense at all to assume that "womb" can have a derivative "with a rudimentary sense of vision".

In the OG sentence, the meaning of this part of the sentence is pretty clear. So we need not worry about the change in meaning because the alternative meaning (being a derivative) does not even make sense.

Thanks.
Shraddha

pinchharmonic wrote:"she was late to pick up her son"

Hi,
@pinchharmonic: In this sentence, the infinitive used is certainly not the infinitive of purpose as you correctly described. "to pick" is acting like an adverb here modifying the adjective "late". When an infinitive works as an adverb to modify a verb or an adjective, then they are called Qualifying Infinitives.

An infinitive of purpose is also a Qualifying Infinitive because it qualifies a verb. For example: We use seat belts to protect ourselves.
Here "to protect" is modifying "use" in that it is talking about the purpose of using seat belts.

Thanks.
Shraddha.