siddyj94 wrote:
If the sentence excluded the part ~previously unseen moons circling Uranus~ then in that case the usage of WHICH would have been correct? Am i right as then the use of which would directly refer to the the cameras.
Please ignore the meaning of the sentence, i just want my doubt of using WHICH to be clarified here.
Please help here.
Thanks in advance
Dear
siddyj94,
I'm happy to respond.
I see that my brilliant colleague
chetan2u already gave a good response. I will just add a couple more thoughts.
The word "
which" is a pronoun, a relative pronoun. As with any pronoun, the antecedent must be a noun. Thus, a clause beginning with "
which" must be noun modifying clause, an
adjectival clause. It never can modify a verb or an action.
Here, what "
doubles to twelve the number of satellites now known"? It's not the "
camera," the noun. It's the action of "
detecting." It's always a classic GMAT SC mistake when a sentence uses a pronoun to refer to an action.
Now, let's be clear about proper terminology. What people call the "
-ing modifier" is properly known as the
present participle. I believe that it's sloppy to refer to this as the "-ing form," because it leads to confusion between the role of participles and that of
gerunds. See:
The –ing Form of a VerbParticiples are truly extraordinary because they can function either as noun modifiers or verb modifiers. Noun modifiers are subject to the
Modifier Touch Rule, but verb modifiers are considerably more free in their placement. Thus, the intervening phrase "
previously seen orbiting Uranus" is irrelevant and makes no difference to the modification in the sentence.
Does all this make sense?
Mike
_________________
Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test PrepEducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)