A mixture of reggae and jazz, the music of the artist was

A mixture of reggae and jazz

What does this part modify? The music: out B and E. (in which modifies the artist)

(A) the music of the artist was more innovative than most of his contemporaries were
Comparison music-contemporaries
(C) the artist’s music was more innovative than that of most of his contemporaries
CORRECT
(D) the music of the artist being more innovative in comparison to the music of most of his contemporaries
"being more innovative" is awkward, C is clearly better

IMO C

3. A mixture of reggae and jazz, the music of the artist was more innovative than most of his contemporaries were.

(A) the music of the artist was more innovative than most of his contemporaries were
music is compared to contemporaries
(B) the artist was more innovative in his music than most of his contemporaries
music is compared to contemporaries
(C) the artist’s music was more innovative than that of most of his contemporaries
Correct comparison
(D) the music of the artist being more innovative in comparison to the music of most of his contemporaries
the dreaded being
(E) the artist, in his music, was more innovative than most of his contemporaries were
incorrect modification of the artist by mixture of reggae and jazz

Question 3
Answer should be C


A) Wrong Comparison music was more innovative than other contemporary artists.

B) The logical referent of a mixture of reggae and jazz is artist's music and not artist itself.

C) Correct Choice

D) Sentence Fragment - No verb in the choice

E) Incorrect for the same reason sited at Choice B

Narenn

Explanation:

Concepts tested: Modifier, Comparison

As the sentence begins with a modifier phrase which is in non-underlined part too, it is important to check the start of part after the comma.

A) Illogical comparison between “music of the artist” and “his contemporaries”. “Music of the artist” should be compared with music of his contemporaries. Wrong.
B) As the sentence is starting with the modifier phrase “A mixture of reggae and jazz”, the part after comma should start with “music” and not “artist”. Wrong.
C) Correct. “A mixture of reggae and jazz” is modifying “the artist’s music” correctly. Comparison between music of the artist and music of his contemporaries is correctly structured.
D) The sentence is unnecessarily verbose and awkwardly structured. Use of “being” is imprecise. Wrong.
E) As the sentence is starting with the modifier phrase “A mixture of reggae and jazz”, the part after comma should start with “music” and not “artist”. Wrong.

Correct Answer is C.

A mixture of reggae and jazz, the music of the artist was more innovative than most of his contemporaries were.

(A) the music of the artist was more innovative than most of his contemporaries were
(B) the artist was more innovative in his music than most of his contemporaries
(C) the artist’s music was more innovative than that of most of his contemporaries
(D) the music of the artist being more innovative in comparison to the music of most of his contemporaries
(E) the artist, in his music, was more innovative than most of his contemporaries were

If you have got the answer correct. Please, tell me why B is wrong.

It is wrong for Three reasons.

1) Misplaced Modifier
Sentence starts with adjectival phrase A mixture of reggae and jazz. What can be a mixture of reggae and jazz, Human or music ? Certainly that adjectival phrase should logically be followed by the noun it modifies i.e. Artist's music
This error has led to an another error - Meaning

2) Meaning
Due to the error presented above, meaning of the sentence also get changed ; Choice B says, The artist himself was innovative while in fact The music, that was a mixture x and y, was innovative.

3) Comparison
Artist was more innovative IN music than IN Contemporary peoples???????

It should be Artist was more innovative in his music than most of his contemporaries were

Hope that Helps!! Patil Saheb!!!

Narenn

Hi,

Regarding the OA, isn't possessive noun Artist's Music a bad antecedent of 'his' . That's the reason why I reject the OA in the first place . What is the rule am i missing here.

/Vaibhav

hi Vaibhav,
I also thought the same but other options are more worse.
also I have read some where that pronoun ambiguity is not an absolute rule.hence we can ignore it if we are left with not other choice.

experts pls comment

br//suryav

Hi Suryav,

I think I cracked this one after pondering over a bit. So here it goes:
When we have a possessive noun in the sentence we can have a possessive pronoun to indicate noun's possession.

For eg: the artist’s music was more innovative than that of most of his contemporaries.

Here "his" is a possessive pronoun and hence the usage is correct. However, it would be incorrect to use 1st person pronoun like him, her etc. as these stand for some noun which is mentioned some where in sentence or has some contextual reference in the sentence.

Lesson learnt!!

Frankly speaking this sentence intended to test this particular concept.

Vaibhav.

Opening noun modifier should have the noun after the modifier. Eliminate B and E. A is comparing music with the contemporaries. Incorrect. D is wordy and the usage of being is incorrect. C uses the modifier correctly and does the correct comparison. Hence C.

A mixture of reggae and jazz modifies music. The underlined part should start something which is related to music

Eliminate B, E

Eliminate A as the music of the artist is compared with contemporaries were

In D, the usage of Being is incorrect so Eliminate D
Below is the correct usage of Being

>Being is used as a noun.
>When passive continuous verb tense is required to communicate the meaning.

Correct choice is C

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