Vinayak,

Recently, entomologists have discovered a number of new insect species, most of them at least as common as the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect,living on the bottom of oceans or within icebergs

LIVING correctly modifies A NUMBER OF NEW INSECT SPECIES


The

vk_vinayak wrote:

karthikpandian19 wrote:Recently, entomologists have discovered a number of new insect species, most of them as common or more common than the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, which live on the bottom of oceans or within icebergs.


(A) most of them as common or more common than the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, which live

(B) most of them at least as common as the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, and living

(C) most of them at least as common as the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, living

(D) mostly at least as common as the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, which live

(E) mostly as common or more common than the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, living

I pick C. In my opinion, for C to be correct, the modifier 'living' must refer to birch aphid. Here 'a tree-dwelling insect' is an appositive modifier and can be removed without altering the meaning of the sentence:

Recently, entomologists have discovered a number of new insect species, most of them at least as common as the birch aphid living on the bottom of oceans or within icebergs.

Recently, entomologists have discovered a number of new insect species, most of them as common or more common than the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, which live on the bottom of oceans or within icebergs.


(A) most of them as common or more common than the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, which live

(B) most of them at least as common as the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, and living

(C) most of them at least as common as the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, living

(D) mostly at least as common as the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, which live

(E) mostly as common or more common than the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect, living



Yes the OA comes out to be C,

Option C conveys the correct meaning unambigiously. It has the pronoun error you can say that there is some ambiguity but you cannot say that it is a bad option when compared to all the other options.

Option E is unidiomatic and does not convey the meaning with simplicity.

Hence the correct answer is C.

lunarpower wrote: vk_vinayak:

I pick C. In my opinion, for C to be correct, the modifier 'living' must refer to birch aphid. Here 'a tree-dwelling insect' is an appositive modifier and can be removed without altering the meaning of the sentence:

Recently, entomologists have discovered a number of new insect species, most of them at least as common as the birch aphid living on the bottom of oceans or within icebergs.

no.
this interpretation is nonsense, since a "tree-dwelling insect" won't live on the ocean floor, or inside icebergs, or anywhere else except in trees.

the modifier is meant to describe the new species. if you're going to play the "eliminate the modifier" game, then you should eliminate "most of them as common or more common than the birch aphid, a tree-dwelling insect," leaving just
...a number of new insect species living on the bottom of oceans...
now this is an interpretation that actually makes sense.

I realized my mistake and the reason behind that mistake also: Odd number of commas.

I had tried removing each modifiers separately with two commas and the sentence didn't make sense to me. I know that if we remove a modifier, then we need to remove the corresponding two commas as well, but in this case, I overlooked the fact that one comma was common for these two modifiers. Good lesson for me.