In Russia, resulting from the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the

Question

In Russia, resulting from the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the second largest airburst recorded on Earth, hundreds of people sought medical attention for injuries caused by glass cuts from imploding windows.

A. resulting from the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the second largest airburst recorded on Earth,

A. resulting from the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the second largest airburst recorded on Earth,
B. the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the second largest airburst recorded on Earth, resulted and
C. resulting from the second largest airburst recorded on Earth, the explosion of Chelyabinsk meteor,
D. the Chelyabinsk meteor, the second largest airburst recorded on Earth, exploded, and the result was that
E. as a result of the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the second largest airburst recorded on Earth,

AndrewN · Accepted Answer

Hello,  Pankaj0901 . In the interest of helping you and the larger community, I will offer my thoughts on each answer choice.

It is difficult at first glance to tell what the modifier is paired with. It would not make sense to say that Russia was resulting from an explosion, but stacking phrases ahead of the main clause (what is known in linguistics as left-branching) is generally not preferred. Here, we get three phrases before we encounter the main clause: prepositional phrase, modifier, appositive phrase, main clause. There should be a better way to express the same idea.

Notice how much easier this line is to follow by staring the main clause right after the first two words of the sentence. Everything works until  and : the explosion... resulted  and  people sought medical attention? I was expecting something more along the lines of  the explosion resulted  in   something that caused people to seek medical attention. The verb  resulted  cannot stand alone in this manner, and for this reason, we can eliminate the answer choice.

The left-branching phrase stacking is just as sloppy as it was in the original sentence. Notice that the appositive phrase is now  the explosion... , which works fine in the sentence—i.e. either the part about the  airburst  or the explosion could come first, with the second one serving as the appositive. If anything, we should feel better about eliminating (A) and (C), since they are essentially the same sentence with interchangeable parts in the middle.

The placement of the appositive phrase skews the meaning. A  meteor  is not an  airburst ; rather, the  explosion  of a meteor was the airburst. By interrupting the main clause in this way, the logical progression of the sentence is muddled. We should not have to go back and forth to figure out what a sentence aims to say.

Of the five options, this is the hardest to argue against. Sure, it is left-branching, with a prepositional phrase followed by another prepositional phrase and an appositive phrase before we reach the main clause, but a sub-optimal sentence is not the same as an incorrect one. To better break down the sentence, since another person asked about it above, I will list and identify the main clusters one by one.

In Russia —prepositional phrase

as a result of the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor — As  is used as a preposition here in the fixed phrase  as a result . It can act as a conjunction or an adverb as well, but generally speaking, you can identify it as a preposition if the part that follows is  not  a clause and is  not  followed by another  as . Here, there is no verb within the cluster, so we can only call it a phrase, and  as a result  is serving to explain something, so we can think of the phrase as adverbial.

the second largest airburst recorded on Earth —an appositive phrase that modifies the earlier  explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor

The rest of the sentence is the main clause, essentially boiling down to  people sought attention , subject-verb-direct object.

Anyway, with four more obviously  worse  answers, we have to get behind (E) as the best of the bunch. I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me.

- Andrew

ankit1607 · Answer

Airbust is resulted from explosion of Meteor. B,C,D refer airbust to Meteor (not explosion of Meteor). 
As it already happened - 'recorded on Earth', So, A ruled out.

IMO : E.

tejaswym95 · Answer

Hello experts can you please explain the structure of option E?

Pankaj0901 · Answer

What is the reason of eliminating Option D? Request experts to please guide.

Eliminating Option D just because of modification of the "immediate" preceding noun correct? I believe the nearest preceding noun that logically makes sense can be the correct noun that is being modified- especially in case of the presence of a participial phrase.

Example:

The best restaurant is McDonalds of Townsquare city, which is also offering 50% discount currently.

Here, :"which" correctly modifies "McDonalds" as it can't modify "city".\

Hence eliminating this option D only because of this reason doesn't seem correct. Please help me understand.

AndrewN  - Request your inputs.

VerbalBot · Answer

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In Russia, resulting from the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the

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In Russia, resulting from the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor, the

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