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14 Aug 2020, 15:15
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Hi,
I came across a question in the Manhattan SC guide involving usage of noun modifier 'which'.
As per the theory in the modifiers chapter, which is always a noun modifier - no concerns here!
comma+ which is a non-essential noun modifier - okay I get this as well.
Consider this example,
INCORRECT: People who are well informed know what Bordeaux is a French region whose most famous export is the wine which bears its name
CORRECT: People who are well informed know what Bordeaux is a French region whose most famous export is the wine that bears its name
Am I right that the presence or the absence of a 'comma' does not matter when using noun modifiers such as 'while,who etc' as these modifiers tend to create a non-essential meaning to the sentence?
I came across a question in the Manhattan SC guide involving usage of noun modifier 'which'.
As per the theory in the modifiers chapter, which is always a noun modifier - no concerns here!
comma+ which is a non-essential noun modifier - okay I get this as well.
Consider this example,
INCORRECT: People who are well informed know what Bordeaux is a French region whose most famous export is the wine which bears its name
CORRECT: People who are well informed know what Bordeaux is a French region whose most famous export is the wine that bears its name
Am I right that the presence or the absence of a 'comma' does not matter when using noun modifiers such as 'while,who etc' as these modifiers tend to create a non-essential meaning to the sentence?
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Thank you for understanding, and happy exploring!
can you help me here? 
14 Aug 2020, 17:14
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rafa90
I would be happy to help out, rafa90. The restrictive which clause is considered more British than American, but in any case, GMAC™ makes it clear in the OG Sentence Correction chapter that that versus which in such a context will not be tested as a split. Yes, GMAC™ tends to use the restrictive that in SC questions, but I have seen the restrictive which pop up in other Verbal contexts (RC passages, for one).
The question you pose at the end of your post gives me some cause for concern. To be clear, the presence or absence of a pair of commas can make a difference in the expressed meaning of a sentence, and you would have to rely on contextual clues to tell which version was the correct one. That is, such a consideration might not be the sole means of separating two SC answer choices, but you should be approaching SC questions holistically anyway. Consider the following sentences:
Sentence 1: Runners who overtrain are more prone to injury.
In the sentence above, the who clause is restrictive and conveys that only a subset of runners, specifically those who train too much, are more prone to injury.
Sentence 2: Runners, who overtrain, are more prone to injury.
Although this sentence uses the same words, the commas change the meaning entirely, suggesting that all runners overtrain and are therefore more prone to injury than are non-runners.
Be careful when looking to create absolute rules of grammar. They rarely hold up under scrutiny, and they can cause you to blindly adhere to an incorrect line of thought. I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to tag me.
- Andrew
