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Long modifier subject confusion(expert help required)

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by arghya05 » Sun Jun 12, 2011 11:13 pm
In June of 1987, The Bridge of Trinquetaille, Vincent van Gogh's view of an iron ridge over the Rhone sold for $20.2million and it was the secnd highest price ever paid for a painting at auction.

A: Rhone sold for $20.2million and it was
B: Rhone, which sold for 20.2million, was
C: Rhone, was sold for 20.2million,
D: Rhone was sold for 20.2million, being
E: Rhone, sold for 20.2million, and was


Taking this question as a base how can we be sure what is the subject of WAS

Bridge of Trinquetaille or Vincent van Gogh's view

i have difficulty in question like

subject1,subject2,verb

or
subject1,subject2+ phrase,verb

or
subject1+ phrase,subject2+ phrase,verb


verb modifies subject2 or subject1

if the structure is like
subject1,subject2 + verb1,verb2

i can say as subject2 has verb1 , verb2 modifies subject1

Please explain with example
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by bubbliiiiiiii » Mon Jun 13, 2011 1:30 am
I viewed the sentence in this way,

IMO C.

Substituting my answer in the question,


In June of 1987, The Bridge of Trinquetaille, Vincent van Gogh's view of an iron ridge over the Rhone, was sold for 20.2million, the secnd highest price ever paid for a painting at auction.

The statements in blue are modifiers.

First one modifies The Bridge of Trinquetaille whereas the second one modifies the amount 20.2million.

Please correct incase wrong.
Regards,

Pranay
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by Ilana@EconomistGMAT » Mon Jun 13, 2011 3:46 am
Your choice is correct, because logically, neither Bridge of Trinquetaille or Vincent van Gogh's view can be the subject of "was". Note that verb "was" is complemented by "(was) the second highest price". Neither the painting or the description of the painting can be logically described as a "price". Only the sum paid (20.2 million) can be called a price, and therefore the phrase "the second highest price" cannot be attached to a phrase that parallel "was sold" - or, in other words, it cannot be a predicate of the subject of "was sold". The only logical option is to have "the second highest price" modify the sum 20.2 million.
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by badresh70 » Mon Jun 13, 2011 10:29 am
Bingo......i got it right.....IMO : C
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by Target2009 » Mon Jun 13, 2011 12:37 pm
My pick : C .. the bridge .. was..
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by lunarpower » Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:22 am
i will admit that i am totally lost with all the subject1's and verb2's and so forth -- maybe you can use some parentheses to make things clearer? -- so i will just show you how the originally correct sentence works:
arghya05 wrote:In June of 1987, The Bridge of Trinquetaille, Vincent van Gogh's view of an iron bridge over the Rhone, was sold for $20.2million, the second highest price ever paid for a painting at auction.
the orange part is a modifier. (it's called an "appositive", but the important part is that it's a modifier.)
modifiers can be removed in grammatical analysis, so you can just look at the remaining part -- The Bridge of Trinq was sold...

the key is just to be able to recognize which parts of a sentence are modifiers.
punctuation and so on can help you here, but the meaning of the sentence makes this job much easier!
if you understand the meaning of the sentence, then you know that "vincent van gogh's view of an iron bridge over the rhone" is a modifier describing the painting; the fact that it is enclosed between two commas should reinforce this conclusion.

i honestly don't think that all this subject1 subject2 verb1 verb2 stuff is going to help you -- there's *way* too much possible variety in english sentences to approach them with this sort of algorithmic technique.
instead, this approach tells me that you aren't paying nearly enough attention to the meaning of the sentence!
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by Ozlemg » Tue Jun 21, 2011 10:10 am
I picked A.
Because I stupidly thought that "was sold for 20.2million" modified the Rhone river incorrectly. I could not recognize the redundancy in A.
The more you suffer before the test, the less you will do so in the test! :)
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