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sentence correction -use of appositive

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sentence correction -use of appositive

by mundasingh123 » Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:29 pm
From comic artist Mark Tatulli's witty observations about the American obsession with all things Hollywood have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring readers to send record volumes of fan mail to newspapers across the country.

(A) things Hollywood have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring
(B) things Hollywood has emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that is inspiring
(C) things that are related to Hollywood has emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that inspire
(D) Hollywood things have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring
(E) Hollywood things have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that inspire

my doubt is : isnt ' a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies' an appositive that should be followed by a comma because without the comma the subordinate clause beginning with "that inspire" modifies movies and not the singular "Heart of the city"
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by rockeyb » Sat Feb 27, 2010 12:11 am
mundasingh123 wrote:From comic artist Mark Tatulli's witty observations about the American obsession with all things Hollywood have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring readers to send record volumes of fan mail to newspapers across the country.

(A) things Hollywood have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring
(B) things Hollywood has emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that is inspiring
(C) things that are related to Hollywood has emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that inspire
(D) Hollywood things have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring
(E) Hollywood things have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that inspire

my doubt is : isnt ' a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies' an appositive that should be followed by a comma because without the comma the subordinate clause beginning with "that inspire" modifies movies and not the singular "Heart of the city"
My answer is E . What is the OA ? here is how I arrived at the answer.

Sentence checks for Subject verb agreement . So verb should be HAVE and not HAS(singular) , eliminate B and C.

In A all things Hollywood is awkward and all Hollywood things is better so eliminate A.

Again between D and E present continuous inspiring is not necessary . So E is correct.
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by kstv » Sat Feb 27, 2010 12:48 am
things Hollywood is atypical American phrase.
I will not rule it out. Betwee A and B.
mundasingh123 observation about Appositive is really good and needs to be dicussed.
An appositive explains or defines the noun it follows and is set off by commas. Ref. https://www.eslbee.com/appositives.htm
Appositives are always set off by commas. Another interesting aspect of appositives is that they can always be exchanged with the nouns they modify as in another example:
The altitude of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, is over 12,000 feet.
The altitude of the capital of Tibet, Lhasa, is over 12,000 feet.
The portion of the sentence qualifies both the above rules
Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies
Infact it we rephrase the sentence
From comic artist Mark Tatulli's witty observations about the American obsession with all things Hollywood have emerged, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies, Heart of the City that are inspiring readers to send record volumes of fan mail to newspapers across the country.
Then IMO B. Sorry but it still does not answer your Qs. Can we insist on appositive which it implied ? It will help if you give the OA.
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by rockeyb » Sat Feb 27, 2010 10:28 pm
my doubt is : isnt ' a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies' an appositive that should be followed by a comma because without the comma the subordinate clause beginning with "that inspire" modifies movies and not the singular "Heart of the city"
I think I have the answer to your question.

An appositive : is a noun modifier . A noun phrase OR a noun that is placed next to a noun to identify it.

Ex : The dog , a german shepard , took a nap.

In the above example the phrase : a german shepard , is modifying the noun DOG.

Most of the time an appositive will give extra information about the noun it is modifying.

BUT as per a grammatical rule(Quoted from MGMAT SC book) :

1. put COMMAS between NON-ESSENTIAL modifiers and their nouns .
2. put NO COMMAS between ESSENTIAL modifiers and their nouns .

Ex : The mansion painted red is owned by lees.

painted red is necessary to identify the mansion and hence is a ESSENTIAL modifier.

Now consider this : THIS mansion , recently pained red , is owned by lees.

The phrase : recently pained red - is a noun modifier since it modifies the noun mansion. But the sentence still makes sense without the modifier , as we know already which mansion are we discussing about.

Now lets get back to the original question.
From comic artist Mark Tatulli's witty observations about the American obsession with all things Hollywood have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring readers to send record volumes of fan mail to newspapers across the country.
Here Heart of City is a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies, but look at the later part of the sentence : THAT inspires readers to send record volume of fan mails .

Now ask the question WHAT is inspiring the readers to send fan mails is it the heart of city OR gossip and popular movies ?

To make the distinction clear we need to make "a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies" a ESSENTIAL modifier .

Also suppose we make this sentence "a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies" a NON ESSENTIAL modifier .

Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies, that are inspiring readers to send record volumes of fan mail to newspapers across the country.

Now the use of THAT here is questionable , as per rule (quoted from MGMAT SC book):

1. Use WHICH (and commas) if modifiers is non-essential.
2.Use THAT (and no commas) if modifier is essential.

So the rule says we need to use WHICH and not THAT .

Lets see what happens if we use WHICH

Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies, which are inspiring readers to send record volumes of fan mail to newspapers across the country.

Now WHICH here seems to refer to movies and not heart of city and this is not correct .

So I believe that the phrase "a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies" is an appositive but is an essential modifier and hence is not separated by commas.

Again I believe the objective of the sentence is to check for subject verb agreement , the subject is the action noun OBSERVATIONS (plural) needs a plural verb form HAVE given by D and E.

So I hope this helps and would like to know the OA please.
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by rajankishore.gupta » Sat Aug 13, 2011 9:18 am
From comic artist Mark Tatulli's witty observations about the American obsession with all things Hollywood have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring readers to send record volumes of fan mail to newspapers across the country.

(A) things Hollywood have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring
(B) things Hollywood has emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that is inspiring
(C) things that are related to Hollywood has emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that inspire
(D) Hollywood things have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that are inspiring
(E) Hollywood things have emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that inspire

Core of the sentence : Obsession emerged as Heart of the City -> Singular Subject so Singular Verb " HAS" => A, D, and E out.

C changes the present continuous to simple present... also, C is wordy.

So answer is B
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by SticklorForDetails » Sat Aug 13, 2011 12:28 pm
mundasingh123 wrote:From comic artist Mark Tatulli's witty observations about the American obsession with all things Hollywood has emerged Heart of the City, a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that is inspiring readers to send record volumes of fan mail to newspapers across the country.

my doubt is : isnt ' a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies' an appositive that should be followed by a comma because without the comma the subordinate clause beginning with "that inspire" modifies movies and not the singular "Heart of the city"
I've corrected the sentence with choice (B), which is the correct answer, because of Subject-Verb agreement twice, first "has emerged Heart of the City" and second "a series ... that is inspiring."

As to your doubt, you are correct; the only reason that an appositive isn't set off by commas is when it ends a sentence, such as:

"I am going to pose this question to my favorite BTG Expert, Adam Sticklor."

Here, "Adam Sticklor" is the appositive to "Expert," but the period ends the sentence, so there is no second comma.

Now, the definition of an appositive is "a noun and its associated modifier(s)." So it could be:

"I was born in a wonderful city, New York." (just a noun appositive)
"I was born in a wonderful city, the great New York." (an appositive made up of noun with two modifying words)
"I was born in New York, a wonderful city that has been described as 'the city that never sleeps.'" (an appositive made up of one noun, "city," and three modifiers: "a," "wonderful," and "that....sleeps," a long phrase that is really just one Adjective Clause).

So ........ (drumroll) .... in the sentence in question, the ENTIRE sentence after the comma is one giant appositive! Let's break it down:

Blue = noun
Other colors = various modifiers

a series centered on celebrity gossip and popular movies that is inspiring readers to send record volumes of fan mail to newspapers across the country

So it's a very long appositive that runs to the end of the sentence, with one noun modified by an article (orange), a participial phrase (green), and a relative clause (cyan)!

Bonus point: the "that" modifier really should be placed closer to "series," because it clearly doesn't modify "movies" (we know this because it mentions "readers," and movies don't have readers!), BUT none of the options fix this, so we're stuck with it. It effectively jumps over the participial phrase before it back to the original noun in the appositive. A bit awkward, but acceptable.
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by mundasingh123 » Sat Aug 13, 2011 12:46 pm
Thank You Sticklor , Superb Explanation
I Seek Explanations Not Answers
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