tsharma wrote:In an attempt to produce premium oysters, a firm in Scotland has developed a prototype of a submersible oyster farm, sitting below the surface of the ocean, and it provides ideal conditions for the mollusks' growth.
A. farm, sitting below the surface of the ocean, and it provides
B. farm, sitting below the surface of the ocean for providing
C. farm that sits below the surface of the ocean and providing
D. farm that sits below the surface of the ocean and provides
E. farm that is sitting below the surface of the ocean and it provides


I want to know the reasoning behind eliminating (B). I see clear parallelism in (D). But in (B) "sitting" modifies the prototype and "for providing" highlights the goal of that prototype. So this sentence makes sense to me.

What is sitting below the surface of the ocean? The oyster farm. In B, since there is a comma before sitting, the word sitting seems to be referring to a firm. Hence B is incorrect. In D, sits and provides are parallel and both correctly modify farm.

What is sitting below the surface of the ocean? The oyster farm. In B: I thought "that" corresponds to the prototype (which is a similar to a submersible oyster farm), since prototype is offset by a prepositional phrase.

the word sitting seems to be referring to a firm: i think i've started to over analyze the usage of "comma + -ing" form. Please clarify some of my doubts. Shouldn't the "ing" form modify the noun before the comma? Now if the noun is at the beginning of the sentence and the "ing" form is far away from that noun, then the "ing" form is typically a misplaced modifier. Example: "Trucks,...,carrying..., are..."

In the above sentence the "prototype" is close enough to "sitting", so i thought it should be fine. Or is it the case that the "-ing" form after comma refers to the noun at the beginning of the preceding clause?