Doubt about "that"

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Doubt about "that"

by Jatinder » Thu Nov 06, 2008 8:42 am
Ron,

I have seen your post @ the link-
https://www.beatthegmat.com/dr-sayre-s-l ... 10951.html

Inference-- Remove the prepositional phrases to get the proper antecedant.

So if do the same for the following question, I would be removing the prepositional phrase "to join other clans" to get the antecedant of "whose",
but that would come out as "homes" whereas "whose" is reffering to "clans" here.

Did i misinterpret anything?
Or the above inference is just to check SV agreement?


As rainfall began to decrease in the Southwest about the middle of the twelfth century, most of the Monument Valley Anasazi abandoned their homes to join other clans whose access to water was less limited.

(A) whose access to water was less limited
(B) where there was access to water that was less limited
(C) where they had less limited water access
(D) with less limitations on water access
(E) having less limitations to water access
Source: — Sentence Correction |

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by Bidisha800 » Fri Nov 07, 2008 11:21 pm
"So if do the same for the following question, I would be removing the prepositional phrase "to join other clans" to get the antecedent of "whose" --

This rule is indeed very entertaining.

May I ask who invented this rule ?
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by Karen » Sat Nov 08, 2008 8:13 pm
The phrase "to join other clans" is not a prepositional phrase; it's an infinitival clause. The infinitive is "to join." The word "whose" does modify "clans."

The idea of removing prepositional phrases has been slightly misunderstood here, I think. The concept is that you should usually ignore prepositional phrases whenyou're trying identifying the subject. For example, if you write "A picture of John standing next to a lighthouse in January hangs on the wall," the subject of "hangs" is "picture" -- not John, lighthouse or January. I don't think the concept of removing prepositional phrases is so useful when looking for the antecedent for a pronoun.

Another way to identify the subject, though, is to think in terms of meaning. In my silly example above, what is the sentence trying to say? Does it make sense that it would be John, a lighthouse, or January hanging on the wall? Clearly it's the picture.
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by lunarpower » Fri Nov 14, 2008 10:13 pm
yeah. as karen pointed out before, you can't simply see the word "to" and assume that you're looking at a prepositional phrase. unfortunately, "to" is also the word that introduces an infinitive.

furthermore, as also pointed out by karen, that is a rule for clarifying subject-verb agreement. you should not generalize the rule to think that you can simply eliminate prepositional phrases in all situations. (also, let me repeat, for emphasis, that the phrase in question this time isn't even a prepositional phrase.)
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