Hello,
Pankaj0901. I am just as confused as you when I look at the sentence in question below, and I propose a rewrite for the sake of clarity. I will respond in-line.
Pankaj0901 wrote:
Hi
AndrewN, request you to please help in clarifying 2 doubts here.
1. In this below example, "who" in the sentence "who was the husband of seeta" refers to "Dhashrath" or to "Ram"? Since, "who" is touching "Dashrath" noun. And "who" is also forming parallel structure for the noun "Ram". How do we identify which one is being implied?
2. Ram, who was the son of Dhashrath , who was the husband of seeta and who was the king of Ayodhya was exiled from Ayodhya for 14 years.
My initial reading of the sentence was that it was a sort of list of historical personages, and I interpreted the
husband of Seeta as Dhashrath. But I am not satisfied with the lack of a comma at the end in an apparent attempt to clarify that Ram was actually the husband. That is, even if I cut out the part about Dhashrath, I would still contain the non-essential modifier within double commas, em dashes, or parentheses:
Ram, who was the husband of Seeta and who was the king of Ayodhya, was exiled from Ayodhya.The ambiguity could be cut out altogether by rearranging the sequence of information in the following manner (just one example):
Ram, who was the husband of Seeta, who was the king of Ayodhya, and who was the son of Dhashrath, was exiled from Ayodhya.Provided the reader knew that Seeta was a female name or at least a name that would not be paired with
king, the sentence would add much needed clarity.
Pankaj0901 wrote:
2. In the same examples: should there not be a "comma" after the non-essential modifier that would separate the noun and the rest part of the sentence? That is,
-> Noun + "," + non-essential modifier + "," + verb
Instead of: Noun + "," + non-essential modifier + "," + verb
For example, the below sentence with comma shouldn't be the correct usage?
Ram, who was the son of Dhashrath , who was the husband of seeta and who was the king of Ayodhya "," was exiled from Ayodhya for 14 years.
Yes, as discussed above, a modifying clause or even an appositive phrase on its own will either use double punctuation or no punctuation
on the GMAT™ for the sake of grammatical consistency. A single comma should not be used to denote a non-essential modifier unless a period wraps up the sentence where the second comma would be. On the GMAT™, I would expect all of the following sentences to be incorrect:
AR15J wrote:
1. Ram, the son of Dhashrath , the husband of seeta and the king of Ayodhya was exiled from Ayodhya for 14 years.
2. Ram, who was the son of Dhashrath , who was the husband of seeta and who was the king of Ayodhya was exiled from Ayodhya for 14 years.
3. Ram, the son of Koshalya and the husband of seeta was exiled from Ayodhya for 14 years.
4 Ram, the son of Koshalya, the king of Ayodhya and the husband of seeta was exiled from Ayodhya for 14 years.
If I find any examples that show otherwise from any edition of the
OG from the past decade, I will let you know. Be careful not to mix real-world grammar and GMAT™ grammar on points in which the two differ. In the sentence about Monet, the two
which clauses merely form a compound modifier, and ambiguity of meaning does not enter the picture.
- Andrew