The first two albums released by the Isley Brothers, an

The first two albums released by the Isley Brothers, an African-American musical group, pictured white people on their covers, because record executives assumed that white consumers would not purchase albums with pictures of African-American artists on them.

The first two albums released by the Isley Brothers, an African-American musical group, pictured white people on their covers
--> correct placement of modifier.

The Isley Brothers’ first two albums, an African-American musical group, pictured white people on their covers
--> modifier placed incorrectly; modifies two albums.

An African-American musical group, the first two albums released by the Isley Brothers pictured white people on their covers
--> nonsense sentence; meaningless

The first two albums released by the Isley Brothers, an African-American musical group who pictured white people on their covers
--> okay it was the albums that pictured not the grp itself

The first two albums released by African-American musical group the Isley Brothers were picturing white people on their covers
--> wrong tense+wrong construction "comma" is required for some sense to make out of the sentence.

Hence A

HTH

is the comma between covers and because right in option A ?

Taking out this old topic....


I am not clear why option A is correct.... What is pictured referring to in Option A...



Experts , Pls adv....

The first two albums released by the Isley Brothers, an African-American musical group, pictured white people on their covers, because record executives assumed that white consumers would not purchase albums with pictures of African-American artists on them.

The first two albums released by the Isley Brothers, an African-American musical group, pictured white people on their covers
Ignoring modifiers (-ed participle modifier), prepositional phrases and parenthetical elements, we see that the SV pair is 'first two albums' and 'pictured'.
This construction looks fine. Let's see what's wrong with others.

The Isley Brothers’ first two albums, an African-American musical group, pictured white people on their covers
The parenthetical element cannot refer to the possessive . This option is wrong. Eliminate

An African-American musical group, the first two albums released by the Isley Brothers pictured white people on their covers
The absolute phrase wrongly refers to the subject. Eliminate

The first two albums released by the Isley Brothers, an African-American musical group who pictured white people on their covers
their has pronoun ambiguity. The bigger mistake - there is no verb corresponding to the subject. Eliminate

The first two albums released by African-American musical group the Isley Brothers were picturing white people on their covers
No proper punctuation - run on sentence. Usage of 'continuous tense' is wrong. Eliminate.

Option A-correct.

Option B-Incorrectly suggests that the first two albums were an African American musical group.

Option C-'An African-American musical group' should modify the Isley Brothers.

Option D-Incorrectly suggests that the Isley Brothers always pictured white people on their covers.This changes the meaning of the sentence.

Option E-Incorrectly uses the past continuous tense for action that has already taken place.Simple past will suffice.

In choice B, why the noun modifier can't refer back to the Isley brothers? Why does it refer only to two albums?

Where is the phrase Isley brothers? You have only a possessive Isley brothers’, which is not a noun but an adjective in this case; The real noun is the albums.

Oh i made a silly mistake.

Thank you!

we need a clear reason for using the continuous tense. at a point of time in the past, if the action is contiuning then we use continous tense.
tense is hard point in english.

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