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Inverse sentence - When correct and incorrect

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VodkaHelps
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Inverse sentence - When correct and incorrect [#permalink] New post   03 Aug 2018, 06:22
Students at Carver High School are encouraged to pursue only those extracurricular activities from which

a. stems success in college applications success in college applications stems.
b. success in college applications stems

Hi guys. Above sentence I saw in MGMAT Verbal, and the author said that both versions are correct. For me, the first version sounds odd, and I at first thought that the order, pretty much, matters a lot in any sentence. However, I have seen many uses of such inverse. Does anyone know any specific rule about this?

Thank you
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Re: Inverse sentence - When correct and incorrect [#permalink] New post   05 Aug 2018, 02:33
Does any one have any idea about this?
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Re: Inverse sentence - When correct and incorrect [#permalink] New post   06 Aug 2018, 10:48
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alexlearning17 wrote:
Students at Carver High School are encouraged to pursue only those extracurricular activities from which

a. stems success in college applications
b. success in college applications stems

Hi guys. Above sentence I saw in MGMAT Verbal, and the author said that both versions are correct. For me, the first version sounds odd, and I at first thought that the order, pretty much, matters a lot in any sentence. However, I have seen many uses of such inverse. Does anyone know any specific rule about this?

Thank you


It's an interesting question. It's definitely okay to invert the subject and verb in some similar cases. For instance, this sounds completely fine to me:

'I noticed a chair upon which slept a large tabby cat.'

And this also sounds completely fine:

'I noticed a chair upon which a large tabby cat slept.'

However, in other cases, it seems wrong:

'He borrowed the brushes with which painted the artist.' Bad!
'He borrowed the brushes with which the artist painted.' Good!

So, I'm not totally sure, and I can't find a good source in the Official Guide (if anybody else has a good Sentence Correction problem that uses this, please post it here!) It seems to possibly have something to do with the specific verb (i.e. 'slept' is fine, but 'painted' isn't.) Maybe you can only invert if the verb is intransitive?
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Re: Inverse sentence - When correct and incorrect [#permalink] New post   07 Aug 2018, 01:49
ccooley wrote:
alexlearning17 wrote:
Students at Carver High School are encouraged to pursue only those extracurricular activities from which

a. stems success in college applications
b. success in college applications stems

Hi guys. Above sentence I saw in MGMAT Verbal, and the author said that both versions are correct. For me, the first version sounds odd, and I at first thought that the order, pretty much, matters a lot in any sentence. However, I have seen many uses of such inverse. Does anyone know any specific rule about this?

Thank you


It's an interesting question. It's definitely okay to invert the subject and verb in some similar cases. For instance, this sounds completely fine to me:

'I noticed a chair upon which slept a large tabby cat.'

And this also sounds completely fine:

'I noticed a chair upon which a large tabby cat slept.'

However, in other cases, it seems wrong:

'He borrowed the brushes with which painted the artist.' Bad!
'He borrowed the brushes with which the artist painted.' Good!

So, I'm not totally sure, and I can't find a good source in the Official Guide (if anybody else has a good Sentence Correction problem that uses this, please post it here!) It seems to possibly have something to do with the specific verb (i.e. 'slept' is fine, but 'painted' isn't.) Maybe you can only invert if the verb is intransitive?


Thank you very much for your input. The last point you mentioned could be the key. If we reverse the order of a clause with an intransitive verb then we might get confused about which noun is the object and subject. Hence, the sentence will have an ambiguous meaning.

I will pay more attention on these usages and, hopefully, will find the patent.
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Re: Inverse sentence - When correct and incorrect [#permalink]
07 Aug 2018, 01:49
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