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Modifier doubt - Airhostess question

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by saurabh2525_gupta » Mon Jul 25, 2011 11:33 pm
The quick witted hostess pitched a tent over the garden party, a way to protect the guest from the imminent rain.

Can we correct it like this:-
The quick witted hostess pitched a tent over the garden party, protecting the guest from the imminent rain.
I think that way because the underlined part modifies the action.

Best Regards,
JOHN
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by garima99 » Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:34 am
saurabh2525_gupta wrote:The quick witted hostess pitched a tent over the garden party, a way to protect the guest from the imminent rain.

Can we correct it like this:-
The quick witted hostess pitched a tent over the garden party, protecting the guest from the imminent rain.
I think that way because the underlined part modifies the action.

Best Regards,
JOHN
Yes it is changing the meaning though,can you share the exact question to be sure.
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by saurabh2525_gupta » Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:26 am
garima99 wrote:
saurabh2525_gupta wrote:The quick witted hostess pitched a tent over the garden party, a way to protect the guest from the imminent rain.

Can we correct it like this:-
The quick witted hostess pitched a tent over the garden party, protecting the guest from the imminent rain.
I think that way because the underlined part modifies the action.

Best Regards,
JOHN
Yes it is changing the meaning though,can you share the exact question to be sure.
Hi Garima,

Thank you for the reply. In the exact question, we have to find modifier error(if any) in the below sentence. There are no options given

The quick witted hostess pitched a tent over the garden party, a way to protect the guest from the imminent rain.
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by bubbliiiiiiii » Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:47 am
Hi,
The quick witted hostess pitched a tent over the garden party, a way to protect the guest from the imminent rain.
This describes that the hostess committed the action with the intention to protect the guests from rain.
The quick witted hostess pitched a tent over the garden party, protecting the guest from the imminent rain.


This statement conveys the meaning that the action committed by hostess incidentally protected the guests from rain.

Gramatically, I believe both the statements are fine but each one of them change the context of the sentence.
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Pranay
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Tue Jul 26, 2011 11:27 am
Hey John,

You're exactly right - by turning the modifier into a prepositional (-ing) modifier we now modify the action, correcting what would have been an error. Modifying "a garden party" as a noun with "a way to protect" is incorrect - a garden party is not a logical way to protect anyone from rain!

Pranay - we didn't really change the intended meaning. Consider this:

The boss gave his employees Friday off, rewarding them for hitting an aggressive sales goal.

He isn't incidentally rewarding them - that was clearly his intent here. A prepositional modifier just modifies the action...it doesn't always modify intent (or lack thereof).
Brian Galvin
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Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep

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by bubbliiiiiiii » Tue Jul 26, 2011 10:44 pm
Thanks Brian for correcting me.

I am actually confused with sentences that use COMMA+a phenomenon kind of structure to describe something. Could you please post some of your inputs on how to identify when to use the above said structure?
Regards,

Pranay
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