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Visitors saw Monkeys !!!

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Visitors saw Monkeys !!!

by goelmohit2002 » Fri May 15, 2009 12:00 am
Hi All,

Below is the question from OG-10 (Q113).

Visitors to the park have often looked up into the leafy canopy and saw monkeys sleeping on the branches, whose arms and legs hang like socks on a clothesline.

Apart from "saw" reason, the reason for kicking out this option as given by OG is "Choices A, B, and E awkwardly separate the relative clause beginning whose arms and legs ... from monkeys, the noun it modifies"

Can somebody please help me understand why it is wrong to separate the same. As per my understanding who/whose modifies people/animals. So it should clearly modify the Monkeys.

Can who/whose refer to all sorts of living things too..for e.g. including plants/trees ec... ? If yes, probably whose can modify the living things(Branches in the above sentence). Please help me understand the same.

If say who/whose can modify all sort of living things....then will it still be problematic if the sentence would have been like:

Visitors saw monkeys sleeping on the table, whose arms and legs hang like socks on a clothesline.

In the above sentence "whose" will modify monkeys or not ?

Kindly tell what I am missing here.

Thanks
Mohit
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by Vitalina » Fri May 15, 2009 12:25 am
IMO:
'..branches, whose ..' modifies branches, as it comes right after this word, thus it is incorrect.
whose should come directly after monkeys to make the sentence correct, or modifier should be expressed with words like 'with armsand legs hanging...'

That's what I think :)
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by goelmohit2002 » Fri May 15, 2009 12:35 am
IMO it is not as simple as that...there is something more to this. Please see the below sentence from Modifier chapter of Manhattan:

Cars come in various colors, which can be cool and trendy.

Here Manhattan says that which makes the above sentence ambigous...as which can modify colors as well as cars...if the touch rule is there...they why it does not apply here.

I am also puzzled by this Modifier rule :-)
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by rookiez » Fri May 15, 2009 1:10 am
In the original sentence whose refer to branch (immediate antecedent). But if we see the next part after whose in the sentence, branches cannot have arms and legs, so the modifying clause is wrong here.
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by goelmohit2002 » Fri May 15, 2009 1:34 am
rookiez wrote:In the original sentence whose refer to branch (immediate antecedent). But if we see the next part after whose in the sentence, branches cannot have arms and legs, so the modifying clause is wrong here.
Can you please help me understand why the same touch rule does apply here too:

Cars come in various colors, which can be cool and trendy.

Here Manhattan says that which makes the above sentence ambigous...as which can modify colors as well as cars...if the touch rule is there...they why it does not apply here.
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by bluementor » Sat May 16, 2009 4:43 am
goelmohit2002 wrote:
rookiez wrote:In the original sentence whose refer to branch (immediate antecedent). But if we see the next part after whose in the sentence, branches cannot have arms and legs, so the modifying clause is wrong here.
Can you please help me understand why the same touch rule does apply here too:

Cars come in various colors, which can be cool and trendy.

Here Manhattan says that which makes the above sentence ambigous...as which can modify colors as well as cars...if the touch rule is there...they why it does not apply here.
I believe you are using either the 2005 or the 2007 edition of MGMAT SC. In my opinion, the explanation that "...the sentence is ambigous.." is not really correct (I know a lot of people swear by it). MGMAT 3rd edition has the following rule, which I believe is correct:

A Noun and its Modifier should Touch each other.

So in other words, in MGMAT's example on cars, the relative clause modifies colors by default., and not cars. No ambiguity here, it's just wrong because it doesnt make sense.

In the original SC problem posted above, the whose clause modifies branches by default, and thats the reason why this choice is not correct, as correctly explained by Vitalina and rookiez.

--------------------------------

**I personally came across a lot of issues with the 2007 ed. of MGMAT SC, where I found some rules (Possesive Poison is one such rule that comes to mind) that doesn't clearly explain some of the problems that you see in the OG. The 3rd edition, on the other hand, is on a whole new level. It has not only better explanation for these rules, but also in-depth explanation of the nuances/exceptions to these rules.

-BM-
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by iamcste » Sat May 16, 2009 5:36 am
Yes! Whose can refer to people or things hence it can refer to branches as well the monkeys and mar the intended meaning

In correct answer, clause starting with whose is replaced with a phrase starting "with".

Can you pls post the complete qtn and then put your specific doubts. Many people do not have OG all the time with them..
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by goelmohit2002 » Sat May 16, 2009 8:17 am
iamcste wrote:Yes! Whose can refer to people or things hence it can refer to branches as well the monkeys and mar the intended meaning

In correct answer, clause starting with whose is replaced with a phrase starting "with".

Can you pls post the complete qtn and then put your specific doubts. Many people do not have OG all the time with them..
Thanks for clarifying....The complete question is as follows:

Visitors to the park have often looked up into the leafy canopy and saw monkeys sleeping on the branches, whose arms and legs hang like socks on a clothesline.
(A) saw monkeys sleeping on the branches, whose arms and legs hang
(B) saw monkeys sleeping on the branches, whose arms and legs were hanging
(C) saw monkeys sleeping on the branches, with arms and legs hanging
(D) seen monkeys sleeping on the branches, with arms and legs hanging
(E) seen monkeys sleeping on the branches, whose arms and legs have hung

Thanks
Mohit
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by Stacey Koprince » Wed May 20, 2009 11:32 am
Received a PM asking me to respond. Generally speaking, noun modifiers should touch the nouns they modify. There are some very rare exceptions to the rule (it seems like there are always rare exceptions to every grammar rule, doesn't it? :)) - but for the most part, they should touch.

who (or whose) indicates a noun modifier, and when we see a "comma who" (or "comma whose") setup, the noun before the comma should be the noun that is being modified.

In the car sentence example, there is something a bit more complicated going on. From a technical standpoint, "which can be cool and trendy" modifies colors, the noun preceding the comma. But we could also describe cars as "cool and trendy" right? The explanation in the old book probably could've elaborated a bit more, but the idea is: if someone says this sentence, do you know whether the person is trying to say "cars can be cool and trendy" or "colors can be cool and trendy"? I wouldn't really be sure, unless I knew the person was a total grammar nut and would make sure to construct anything they say perfectly correctly. So, in that sense, it's ambiguous, and that's why we have to be careful about how we construct these things. But, as far as strict grammar is concerned, the sentence is saying "colors can be cool and trendy."

By the same token, in the OG problem here (which I'm only going to mention VERY briefly, because we're not supposed to discuss OG problems online!), the "comma whose" answers point to the word before the comma, but that word doesn't make sense... so those choices are all wrong. A "comma preposition" set-up, however, is more loose - it's not a strict noun modifier and doesn't have to modify only the noun immediately preceding the comma. It can modify the whole clause. So "comma with" is the way to go on this one.
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