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sharmaprashant19
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Use of that and which 04 Aug 2013, 10:44
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Can someone please clarify my doubt:

1. The use of lie detectors is based on the assumption that lying produces emotional reactions in an individual that, in turn, create unconscious physiologial responses.

In this question 126 of OG, "that" before comma refers back to "emotional reactions" and not to "individual". The reason we give is "in an individual" is a prepositional phrase and "that" refers back to preceding noun, which is "emotional reactions". Correct??

But
2. In the review of 2000 studies of human behavior that date back to 1940's, two Swiss psychologists, declared that since most of the studies had failed to control for such variables as social class and family size, none could be taken seriously.

In this question as explained earlier:

egmat
Solutions: We asked you to identify the SV pairs in the two official sentences, figure out if there is anything wrong wrt the SV pairs, and if errors are present, how they can be corrected. So here are the answers:

Sentence 1

As you can see, "that" in this sentence is the subject of its clause. It refers to 2,000 studies.
All the SV pairs have been identified in green color. The verb has also been underlined.
The subject - two swiss psychologists does not have a verb. Declaring should be made into the verb - declared.

Sentence 2

As you can see, there are two occurrences of "that" in this sentence. Both refer to the noun - a work. While first occurrence of "that" acts as the subject of the clause, second occurrence of "that" does not act as the subject. In this clause, the subject is "Samuel Johnson". Note that if we were to write a standalone sentence with just this information related to second clause with that, we would write it as:
Samuel Johnson pronounced the work the greatest translation in any language.
Coming to the errors - there is no verb for the noun "that". Taking should be changed to "took".

I would like to thank all who posted their responses. Next I will review each response. :)
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"that" before "date" refers to "2000 studies", but is "of 2000 studies" a prepositional phrase, and hence "that" should ideally refer back to "review" ???

My query now is if there is a "noun+prepositional phrase(containing a noun)" before "that" in a sentence, than what should "that" refer back to.
Similarly if there is a "noun+prepositional phrase(containing a noun), " before "which" than what "which" refer back to.

Please anyone explain my query.
Thank You

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Use of that and which 04 Aug 2013, 11:41
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sharmaprashant19


My query now is if there is a "noun+prepositional phrase(containing a noun)" before "that" in a sentence, than what should "that" refer back to.
Similarly if there is a "noun+prepositional phrase(containing a noun), " before "which" than what "which" refer back to.

Please anyone explain my query.
Thank You
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it is not true that if you have a preposition phrase then it(THAT/WHICH) will modify farther noun..
which/THAT always modifies closest noun....except in few cases.

the rule is:
Relative Pronouns Modify closest nouns UNLESS
– The phrase between modified entity and modifier provides additional
information about modified entity
– The phrase cannot be placed anywhere else
– The phrase does not create any ambiguity in meaning

few examples:
I killed the snake,which lived in the burrow behind my house.==>which clearly modifies....SNAKE.

I killed the snake with scales ,which lived in the burrow behind my house.===>here which modifies snake and not the scales...because....above conditions follow here....scales is describing snake....you cannot place anywhere else to make sense correctly.....it doesnot create any ambiguity means.....==>this means scales live behind my house....this doesnt makes sense....

now take other example.:
i killed the snake with eggs ,which lay in burrow behind my house......==>here you can see that there is ambiguity....both EGGS and SNAKE can lay in burrow...hence this version of which is wrong....

HOPE IT HELPS

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