OG (10th ed) - SC - #43 ) Multiple Modifiers -How to arrange
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anantbhatia
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FightWithGMAT
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POE will lead us to A. But I have a basic question, maybe I am missing something.....GMATMadeEasy wrote:43. In the minds of many people living in England, before Australia was Australia, it was the antipodes, the opposite pole to civilization, an obscure and unimaginÂable place that was considered the end of the world.
(A) before Australia was Australia, it was the antipodes
(B) before there was Australia, it was the antipodes
(C) it was the antipodes that was Australia
(D) Australia was what was the antipodes
(E) Australia was what had been known as the antipodes
Correct answer is A .
i infer from correct answer that the last two modifiers (the opposite pole to civilization, an obscure and unimaginÂable place that was considered the end of the world. ) or appositive more precisely are correctly used. But I am not sure of reasoing that can be used to explain.
If I turn the question this way,, is the usage of modifier is correct ? How and Why ? I hope some experts can throw their advise on this.The opposite pole to civilization, an obscure and unimaginÂable place that was considered the end of the world, the antipodes is knows as Austalia today.
Should not the option A be...
before Australia was Australia, it had been the antipodes
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GMATMadeEasy
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lunarpower
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in reply to the original post:
i'm not really sure what you mean by "reasoning", as you appear to have already identified what's going on.
the only thing that i think you might be asking about is the order of the appositives -- is that what you're asking about?
if so, then that's pretty random -- those are just two appositives, for which the directions are basically the same (put them after the noun "antipodes"). since you obviously can't put both of them immediately after the noun -- you have to put one after the other -- they've chosen the phrasing in which the shorter of the two appositives is used first, in order to make the sentence more easily readable.
as an analogy, see the orange and blue examples in the following link. it's not an exact analogy, since they aren't appositives, but it's the same sort of deal (the order of 2 constructions is dependent on their relative length):
https://www.beatthegmat.com/introductory ... tml#234030
you are correct -- the last two modifiers are appositives.GMATMadeEasy wrote:i infer from correct answer that the last two modifiers (the opposite pole to civilization, an obscure and unimaginÂable place that was considered the end of the world. ) or appositive more precisely are correctly used. But I am not sure of reasoing that can be used to explain.
i'm not really sure what you mean by "reasoning", as you appear to have already identified what's going on.
the only thing that i think you might be asking about is the order of the appositives -- is that what you're asking about?
if so, then that's pretty random -- those are just two appositives, for which the directions are basically the same (put them after the noun "antipodes"). since you obviously can't put both of them immediately after the noun -- you have to put one after the other -- they've chosen the phrasing in which the shorter of the two appositives is used first, in order to make the sentence more easily readable.
as an analogy, see the orange and blue examples in the following link. it's not an exact analogy, since they aren't appositives, but it's the same sort of deal (the order of 2 constructions is dependent on their relative length):
https://www.beatthegmat.com/introductory ... tml#234030
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.
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lunarpower
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you could do that, yes, although the meaning of the sentence has now been distorted (i.e., the sentence doesn't have the correct meaning anymore).If I turn the question this way,, is the usage of modifier is correct ? How and Why ? I hope some experts can throw their advise on this.The opposite pole to civilization, an obscure and unimaginÂable place that was considered the end of the world, the antipodes is knows as Austalia today.
i.e., the original sentence talks about australia (a given place that exists in objective reality), noting that it was once known as the antipodes. this new sentence, on the other hand, appears to be talking about "the antipodes" as though that's a place that exists in objective reality, and about "australia" as an incidental label; that's the wrong meaning.
the grammar, on the other hand, is fine.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.
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