Ashu1008 wrote:
Hi guys,
i have two sentences , both having prepositional phrase (PP) " for safe passage" as in example below---
The jagged rocks made him steer the boat carefully for safe passage.---------(1)
The jagged rocks made him steer the boat for safe passage.------------(2)
i want to know which word does Prepositional Phrase " for safe passage" modify in both the sentences. some of my friends said that in sentence 1 PP "for safe passage" modifies Adverb "carefully" , but some says that pp "for safe passage" modifies verb "Steer".
i am really confused. Need some expert advice on that. which is correct ?
what about sentence 2 which does not have adverb carefully. which word does PP modifies in sentence 2.
kindly help me out.
A prepositional phrase modifier can modify a lot of different things. They aren't like 'which' modifiers, which always modify one specific noun. Because of this, it's usually the case that the sentence is correct as long as you can clearly tell what the prepositional phrase is describing. On the other hand, if there are multiple different things the prepositional phrase might be describing, and you can't clearly tell which one is 'right', there's a meaning problem and the sentence is wrong.
For instance, in both of your sentences, it's clear that 'for safe passage' is describing the way in which the man is steering the boat. It doesn't really matter whether it modifies the adverb 'carefully' in particular, the verb 'steer', or the whole phrase 'steer the boat'. Either way, it doesn't really change the meaning of the sentence: he's steering the boat in a particular way for a particular reason. Since there's nothing else it could logically be describing, the meaning of the sentence is good.
But in this sentence, there's a problem:
Dinah hit the man with the bat.
'with the bat' could be talking about two totally different things. It could be talking about something the man is holding (he's holding a bat, and Dinah hit him). Alternatively, it could be talking about the way that Dinah hit the man (she picked up the bat and hit him with it.) Since you can't tell, and since those two meanings are different, there's something wrong with the sentence.