SamzayWarrior wrote:
GMATNinja ,
KarishmaB,
AjiteshArun,
MartyMurrayFor options D and E- does the part after the comma -modifiers determined by and differed/differing not modify the subject 'The growth of the railroads' rather than local times? Do we not require 'which' to specifically have the modifiers refer to 'local times'? I did understand the explanation of the options but I am wondering if there is a conceptual gap regarding modifiers because while attempting the question I had straightaway rejected D and E because of the above-mentioned confusion.
Hi SamzayWarrior,
To add to Karishma's response, participles are quite flexible in terms of the roles they can play in a sentence. Here are a few points for you to keep in mind:
1. It's absolutely fine to classify the modifiers you mentioned as adjectives. However, what most test takers don't realise is that
these kinds of adjectives almost always do more than normal adjectives. That's why in my classes we generally consider them adverbs instead.
2. Introductory participles ("before a comma") are more likely to be adverbs like those discussed in point (1), but
participles used after a comma are harder to pin down, and we should keep the context in mind when deciding whether we're looking at an adjective or an adverb. Here's a discussion on some of these issues ("warm up" and "using present participles"):
Finally, relative pronouns like
which and
that are great for referring to nouns that are quite close to them, but they're not perfect. If we want or need to reduce ambiguity, we could repeat the noun we want to refer to (see "resumptive modifiers" in the video above).