daagh wrote:
Jon, do you mean that the participles (, overlooking) and (, without considering) modify the subject of the previous clause, (namely the response) rather than the subject and the action of the subject (namely the response and its action to rebuild)?
Then don't you think that it would be a misnomer to call them adverbial modifiers?
If one really meant to modifiers to modify the subject, then one would change the word order as ---
Quote:
Overlooking the possibility that the forces that caused it could be repeated, a natural response of communities devastated by earthquake or flood is to rebuild on the same site.
Dear
daagh,
(Sorry for such a long post. I tried to be as much precise as I can so that beginners could benefit from it.)
Today I’ve had enough time to reflect on this question. And, with your permission, I’d like to share with you some findings.
A. I think we need to modify too widespread but not always correct notion: “comma + verbing must modify the subject and the action of that subject in the preceding clause”.
Let’s use more precise description from
GMATGuruNY and
RonPurewal: “COMMA + VERBing serves to refer to the
nearest preceding action and the performer of that action.” This precision is indeed important because the performer of the action is NOT always the subject of the preceding clause. Below are two examples:
B. Mitch Hunt gives a good explanation of how comma+verbing works here:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/?href=-map-e ... 84515.html- Geologists use a network of seismometers to chart seismic
waves that originate in the earth's crust and
ricochet around its interior,
travelling most rapidly through cold, dense regions and more slowly through hotter rocks.
Here, the subject of the main sentence is “geologists”, and the action of this subject is “use”. So, according to widespread notion, comma+travelling should refer to “geologist” and “use”. But that’s incorrect because geologists are not travelling through hotter rocks. Actually, comma + travelling here refers to the nearest preceding action “ricochet” and its performer “seismic waves”. And it’s perfectly logical to say that seismic waves ricochet while travelling through certain regions of earth’s crust. We can also note that “waves” is not the subject of the sentence, and “ricochet” is not the main verb. That’s why we need a more precise description.
C. Another good example comes from Ron. He says: Note that i've been careful to say that these modifiers describe "actions". i.e., I’m careful NOT to say "verbs". For example:
- I peeked into the workshop and saw the master watchmaker leaning over the table, squinting at the tiny parts of an old Rolex.
Ron: here, comma + "squinting..." describes the action of "leaning over the table".
"leaning" isn't technically a verb, but it still represents an action (and is ultimately derived from a verb).
Once again, comma + squinting is not referring to the subject of the sentence “I” and its action “peeked” or “saw”, but referring to the nearest action “squinting” and its performer “the master watchmaker”.
Small conclusion: COMMA + VERBing serves to refer to the
nearest preceding action and the performer of that action. And that performer is not always the subject of the sentence.
Considering all the above, we can finally dissect our original question:- A natural response of communities devastated by earthquake or flood is
to rebuild on the same site, without considering that the forces that caused the disaster could also cause another such disaster.
Here, “without considering” refers to “to rebuild” because “to rebuild” is the nearest preceding action. And it’s logical to say that someone fails to consider a danger while rebuilding the communities. So “without considering” makes sense with “to rebuild”. However, “without considering” doesn’t necessarily have to make sense with the subject of the sentence “a response of communities” - because “a response of communities” is not the performer of the action “to rebuild”. The performer of “rebuild” is implied but not clearly shown here.
Let me, please, try to be a bit more precise so that I can explain what I mean. the construction “a natural response is to rebuild” is similar to “A is B” in which both A and B are nouns. “to rebuild” is a noun here, and “to rebuild” is equal to “a natural response”. So, “a response” is not the performer of “to rebuild”, and hence “without considering” doesn’t have to modify “a response”.
There is a similar example:- The main rule of bungee jumping is
to jump with wide open arms, without looking down.
Here, neither “main rule” nor “bungee jumping” performs the action “jump”. The actual performer (people) is implied but not explicitly shown. “without looking down" makes sense with “to jump” and its implied performer (people), but doesn’t necessarily have to make sense with the subject of the sentence “main rule”. The same is true for the original sentence.
Main conclusion: “without considering” does make sense with the nearest action “to rebuild” and its implied performer (people), but doesn’t necessarily have to make sense with the subject of the sentence “a natural response”.
There is a similar official example here, with
GMATGuruNY 's detailed explanation:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/?href=.html#831859Thank you for your patience. Your comments are welcome.