thanks Gmat4babu....

Diabetes, together with its serious complications, ranks as the nation's third leading cause of death, surpassed only by heart disease and cancer

-ing Modifiier Pharse at the end of the sentence.. modifier the subject of previous clause... ( action of the subject)

But

From Test magic forum -- ( Erin )
I came to know a rule that

ed modifier at the end of the sentence modifies the just preceding noun.

which i guess i now wrong....

Confused
Any ideas ??

gmat4babu wrote:Following is the Q3 from OG 11th edition:

Diabetes, together with its serious complications, ranks as the nation's third leading cause of death, surpassed only by heart disease and cancer.

Can someone explain how the past participle "surpassed" modifies Subject of the previous clause "Diabetes" in this Correct SC from OG?

if you read w/o the parentheses it reads "diabetes,surpassed by ....". so surpassed by modifies only diabetes.
the words within the commas just add extra information about diabetes. applies for all phrases set off by commas.

scoobydooby - If it modifies Diabetes, it should not be so far from the noun. I am starting to think if "surpassed only by heart disease and cancer" is an adverbial modifier which modifies "ranks"

gmat4babu wrote:scoobydooby - If it modifies Diabetes, it should not be so far from the noun. I am starting to think if "surpassed only by heart disease and cancer" is an adverbial modifier which modifies "ranks"

thanks gmat4babu for pointing out. makes sense. surpassed should modify ranks.

Thanks again, gmat4babu

ronniecoleman wrote:thanks Gmat4babu....

Diabetes, together with its serious complications, ranks as the nation's third leading cause of death, surpassed only by heart disease and cancer

-ing Modifiier Pharse at the end of the sentence.. modifier the subject of previous clause... ( action of the subject)

But

From Test magic forum -- ( Erin )
I came to know a rule that

ed modifier at the end of the sentence modifies the just preceding noun.

which i guess i now wrong....

Confused
Any ideas ??

Even i got confused as i was also following the above rule (Bob, Erin)
I am creating one more thread with the same subject in testmagic.com. Let's see what those guys think.