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The ancient Anasazi harvested such native desert vegetation [#permalink]
 09 Jun 2009, 03:28
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The ancient Anasazi harvested such native desert vegetation as the purple-flowered bee plant, what they now commonly call wild spinach in northern Arizona and other parts of the southwestern United States. A. what they now commonly call B. a plant that they now commonly call C. now commonly called D. and is mow commonly called E. which it is now commonly called Guys, the usage of participle in this sentence makes me confused. For me, the participle "now commonly called" modifies "Anasazi" rather than "plant". what do you think?
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sondenso wrote: The ancient Anasazi harvested such native desert vegetation as the purple-flowered bee plant, what they now commonly call wild spinach in northern Arizona and other parts of the southwestern United States. Here we should use passive voice, as the subject "they" is not someone specific or know. So A and B is out. D and E is also out since they are wordy and in E "which it is" sounds awkward. C is correct. "now commonly called" is immediately placed after bee plant. Its modifying "bee plant" rather than "ancient Anasazi".
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sondenso wrote: The ancient Anasazi harvested such native desert vegetation as the purple-flowered bee plant, what they now commonly call wild spinach in northern Arizona and other parts of the southwestern United States.
A. what they now commonly call
B. a plant that they now commonly call
C. now commonly called
D. and is mow commonly called
E. which it is now commonly called
Guys, the usage of participle in this sentence makes me confused. For me, the participle "now commonly called" modifies "Anasazi" rather than "plant".
what do you think? A, and B are out for using 'they' D -- is out for using 'and' .. you are not listing things so 'and' is wrong here. E -- wrong for using 'which it' .. so I arrived to C by POE. IMO C.
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sondenso wrote: The ancient Anasazi harvested such native desert vegetation as the purple-flowered bee plant, what they now commonly call wild spinach in northern Arizona and other parts of the southwestern United States.
A. what they now commonly call
B. a plant that they now commonly call
C. now commonly called
D. and is mow commonly called
E. which it is now commonly called
Guys, the usage of participle in this sentence makes me confused. For me, the participle "now commonly called" modifies "Anasazi" rather than "plant".
what do you think? Why are you saying that the participle seems to modify "Anasazi"? because of the comma? first of all, commas have different usage. In this case, the comma is used to differentiate essential from a non-essential clause. The main purpose of this sentence is to say only that "The ancient Anasazi harvested such native desert vegetation as the purple-flowered bee plant." That's the main point of the sentence. Also, I disagree that "they" can not refer to "Anasazi." Of course it can. Treat "The Anasazi" the same way you would treat "The French are....", etc. However, the reason I still think that referring to "Anasazi" is wrong is that the sentence says, "they NOW commonly call." How can "Anasazi" now call something when this race used to exist in the ancient time? So that eliminates answer choices A and B. Option D suggests that "The Anasazi" is now commonly called "wild spinach." So that's illogical Option E, "which" already refers to "purple-flowered bee plant", so there's no point to add another pronoun "it" since "which" is already a pronoun (or a relative pronoun to be exact) referring to the plant. So answer C remains as our answer choice.
Last edited by tarek99 on 26 Aug 2009, 03:08, edited 1 time in total.
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tarek99 wrote: Why are you saying that the participle seems to modify "Anasazi"? because of the comma? first of all, commas have different usage. In this case, the comma is used to different essential from a non-essential clause. The main purpose of this sentence is to say only that Many thanks tarek99, yeah, the comma is for me a problem. As the rule I noticed in some Og, If there is no comma btw, the participle modifies correctly "bee plant"
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sondenso wrote: tarek99 wrote: Why are you saying that the participle seems to modify "Anasazi"? because of the comma? first of all, commas have different usage. In this case, the comma is used to different essential from a non-essential clause. The main purpose of this sentence is to say only that Many thanks tarek99, yeah, the comma is for me a problem. As the rule I noticed in some Og, If there is no comma btw, the participle modifies correctly "bee plant" you are correct as long as that sentence still acts as an essential setence. However, if the sentence after the comman acts as only a non-essential clause, then it merely provides an extra information about the last noun before the comma.
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I chose E because I thought the word which should come after the comma. Can someone please clarify when the word which should be used?
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Im still thinking that now commonly called refers to the Anasazi. How can it refer to the precedent noun? the second clause seems to modify the entire first clause. Please clarify.
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Except C none of the other options make sense.
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mendelay wrote: I chose E because I thought the word which should come after the comma. Can someone please clarify when the word which should be used? i got E too but what we made mistake is that choice E use "which it" rather than "which". this is a very eyecatching error.
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Great question here...I've always enjoyed teaching this one. For those who liked E, keep in mind that "which" is a modifier that takes the place of "plant" - essentially "which" is used as a pronoun, so the word "it" is redundant...we're just piling on at that point. You wouldn't say "For Christmas I got a new bike, which it is red". You'd just say "I got a new bike, which is red..." For A and B, I think it's important to note that "they" does properly replace "Anasazi" as a pronoun...there's nothing wrong with the pronoun itself. What IS wrong here is the logic. We're talking about the ANCIENT Anasazi...so it's illogical that they would "NOW" commonly call a plant something different. Ancient means that there isn't anything they're doing "now". A and B don't really have a pronoun error, but they're both guilty of a vicious logical error. C is correct - it properly modifies "plant" with "now commonly called", and therefore is correct. D, just for completeness' sake, illogically makes it sounds like "Anasazi" is now commonly called "Wild spinach" - the word "and" links the two verbs "harvested" and "is", binding them both to the same subject, Anasazi.
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VeritasPrepBrian wrote: Great question here...I've always enjoyed teaching this one.
For those who liked E, keep in mind that "which" is a modifier that takes the place of "plant" - essentially "which" is used as a pronoun, so the word "it" is redundant...we're just piling on at that point. You wouldn't say "For Christmas I got a new bike, which it is red". You'd just say "I got a new bike, which is red..."
For A and B, I think it's important to note that "they" does properly replace "Anasazi" as a pronoun...there's nothing wrong with the pronoun itself. What IS wrong here is the logic. We're talking about the ANCIENT Anasazi...so it's illogical that they would "NOW" commonly call a plant something different. Ancient means that there isn't anything they're doing "now". A and B don't really have a pronoun error, but they're both guilty of a vicious logical error.
C is correct - it properly modifies "plant" with "now commonly called", and therefore is correct.
D, just for completeness' sake, illogically makes it sounds like "Anasazi" is now commonly called "Wild spinach" - the word "and" links the two verbs "harvested" and "is", binding them both to the same subject, Anasazi. Thanks for this explanation. I got C as well using POE. Nothing else really made sense
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