Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson were

[chitrangada.maitra]

This is the best analysis i have ever read of the appropriately named, 'possessive poison'

Thanks, Ron!

[jnelson0612]

Yes, Ron rocks! :-)

[violetwind]

your post here is sort of like the riddle of the sphinx: the answer is actually hidden inside your own writing.

let me show you: (the blue highlight is mine)

Some people say that using a present participle phrase to express the (direct/indirect) result of the preceding clause is not allowed when the preceding clause is in a passive voice.

this is exactly the problem: the phrase in question, "outnumbering ...", is NOT, in any way whatsoever, a "(direct/indirect) result" of the time period over which the letters were written. these are tw completely independent and unrelated observations about the letters, and so they can't be placed into the sort of construction that appears in choice (a). this is thus not a grammatical problem so much as a problem of clarity, but it's still a problem.

examples:
my brother, who ate bagel bites for breakfast every single day of his high school career, graduated in 1994. --> correct; his eating bagel bites had no impact on his graduation date.
my brother ate bagel bites for breakfast every single day of his high school career, graduating in 1994. --> incorrect; these are two unrelated observations, but this construction erroneously implies some sort of relationship.

Hi Ron, I guess the essence of the usage of "comma+ V-ing" is meaning ---the relationship between the verb in main clause and that in the "comma+ Ving" structure.

I can also see that " 'outnumbering ...', is NOT, in any way whatsoever, a '(direct/indirect) result' of the time period over which the letters were written" ,but I found out that this following SC problem,in which the verbs have similar relationship(unrelated, just two aspects of one thing,neither"simultaneous" nor "result of""), uses "comma+Ving" can you explain it?

og-sc-24-t582.html

[RonPurewal]

I found out that this following SC problem,in which the verbs have similar relationship(unrelated, just two aspects of one thing,neither"simultaneous" nor "result of""), uses "comma+Ving" can you explain it?

og-sc-24-t582.html

not unrelated; "protecting..." clarifies why they were essential pieces of equipment.
i agree that this instance may not fit 100% perfectly into either of those 2 categories, but there is still a very clear and strong relationship between the modifier and the preceding clause.

[546558048]

Hi, Ron
I have another question here for I think the construct of"......, outnumbering......" modifys "letters" rather than express a result. Given that "letters to SHD outnumber her letters to anyone else" is correct, I consider answer A is correct.

Thanks advancedly

[violetwind]

your post here is sort of like the riddle of the sphinx: the answer is actually hidden inside your own writing.

let me show you: (the blue highlight is mine)

Some people say that using a present participle phrase to express the (direct/indirect) result of the preceding clause is not allowed when the preceding clause is in a passive voice.

this is exactly the problem: the phrase in question, "outnumbering ...", is NOT, in any way whatsoever, a "(direct/indirect) result" of the time period over which the letters were written. these are tw completely independent and unrelated observations about the letters, and so they can't be placed into the sort of construction that appears in choice (a). this is thus not a grammatical problem so much as a problem of clarity, but it's still a problem.

examples:
my brother, who ate bagel bites for breakfast every single day of his high school career, graduated in 1994. --> correct; his eating bagel bites had no impact on his graduation date.
my brother ate bagel bites for breakfast every single day of his high school career, graduating in 1994. --> incorrect; these are two unrelated observations, but this construction erroneously implies some sort of relationship.

Hi Ron,

I kinda get more understanding about this SC question ,please see if I am right.

I guess, the reason that lots of people think related about the period that the letters were written and the "outnumbering" result,is that the period has some implication of "so many letters"---because that's a long period. But it is not what that sentence literally means. In other words, it just means the time range from the first letter to the last letter(maybe there were only 3 or 4 letters.)

If we want the "period" to have some relationship with "outnumber", maybe the sentence should be written like this:
Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson were written everyday over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumbering her letters to anyone else.


about the bagel example, I think it's not a good analog , as "eating bagel" and "graduating" are much far related than "letter were written during a long period" and "the letters outnumber those she wrote to anyone".

it can be : my brother ate bagel bites during a period that began from his first day to high school and ended at his graduation day, becoming a guy who ate bagel bites more than anyone he knew. (the sentence is kinda weird, I know~)

In this way, it seems as tempting as the orginal SC problem.

If we can still come to the conclusion that the "becoming the guy" is defenitely wrong about the usage of "ing", the example can be more convincible. Can we?

[RonPurewal]

I guess, the reason that lots of people think related about the period that the letters were written and the "outnumbering" result,is that the period has some implication of "so many letters"---because that's a long period. But it is not what that sentence literally means. In other words, it just means the time range from the first letter to the last letter(maybe there were only 3 or 4 letters.)

If we want the "period" to have some relationship with "outnumber", maybe the sentence should be written like this:
Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson were written everyday over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumbering her letters to anyone else.

that's basically the idea, yeah.

about the bagel example, I think it's not a good analog , as "eating bagel" and "graduating" are much far related than "letter were written during a long period" and "the letters outnumber those she wrote to anyone".

that's the whole point! the whole point of explanatory examples is that they should be much easier to understand than the original.
if the analogy were too close, then anyone who didn't understand the original problem wouldn't understand the analogy either.

If we can still come to the conclusion that the "becoming the guy" is defenitely wrong about the usage of "ing", the example can be more convincible. Can we?

that example is, essentially, a replica of the original problem, so the same reasoning holds.

[alicegmat]

Hi Ron,
Is the X of Y extension of the rule (for which modifier) applicable to other noun modifiers? Such as that?

I came across an example in the OG where X of Y was modified by an appositive following a comma.

The construction of a correct answer is

..one of Kirchhoff's laws, an observation about electric current...

one of Kirchoff's laws is the subject modified by the appositive phrase following the comma

Does this fall in X of Y category or is this correct because the pronoun one is the actual subject here?

Also, does an appositive have to agree in number with the noun it modifies?

Thanks!

[alicegmat]

Can a clause in passive voice be modified by an -ing modifier that follows it anyway?

i.e.
Clause (passive voice) , -ing modifier.

Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson were written over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumbering her letters to anyone else.

Thanks!

[RonPurewal]

Does this fall in X of Y category or is this correct because the pronoun one is the actual subject here?

i'm not sure i understand the question, but i'm fairly certain that any modifier that can modify a noun can also modify noun1 + prep + noun2.

Also, does an appositive have to agree in number with the noun it modifies?

i could think of exceptions -- e.g., The Tigers (plural), a team (singular) that has won the last 6 championships ... -- but such exceptions would be rare.
however, remember that appositives don't have to modify nouns; they can also modify the entire preceding clause, in which case "number agreement" doesn't exist anymore.

[RonPurewal]

Can a clause in passive voice be modified by an -ing modifier that follows it anyway?

there's no reason why the two voices would differ in this regard.

[alicegmat]

Thanks a lot!

[RonPurewal]

sure.

[davetzulin]

brief synopsis of problems with other choices:

...

(b)
this choice tries to put were written and ended in parallel.
this parallelism implies that the letters "ended" or "were ended", neither of which makes sense.
the verb "outnumber" also makes this not a valid sentence, for

...

Ron, I feel answer choice B is a good example of why parallelism is even important in sentence clarity, since your explanation of B is like approaching the OGs explanation of B from another angle.

Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson were written over a period that begins
a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s
brother and ended shortly before Emily’s death
in 1886, outnumber

I like your explanation better, because it appears that you were looking for parallelism between that begins and ended. And in particular you wanted to see, that ended. And because you couldn't find it, the sentence appears to parallel were written and ended incorrectly.

My question is, with the one-part parallel marker "and", is there an implicit rule that the "that" must repeat? In fact up until this moment I always made sure the "that" repeated, but now I'm questioning it since the one-part marker is more flexible.

can you not say the following two sentences?

"[some time period] that begins a few years before Susan's marriage to Emily's brother and ended" ?

or

there is a dog that ran in circles and barked non-stop

Btw, there was another post by Tim that regarding the "that" , which made a lot of sense. I recall him saying that you really only need to repeat the "that" if there is another subject, ie "its".

"i suggest that the lava is hot and that its movement is dangerous"

which makes sense to me since you have two clauses with a subj. verb, and "that" is a subordinator. But in the cases earlier the subject seems to 'stripe' across the parallel elements.

[gmatwork]

this is exactly the problem: the phrase in question, "outnumbering ...", is NOT, in any way whatsoever, a "(direct/indirect) result" of the time period over which the letters were written. these are tw completely independent and unrelated observations about the letters, and so they can't be placed into the sort of construction that appears in choice (a). this is thus not a grammatical problem so much as a problem of clarity, but it's still a problem.

Referring to the above quote from Ron's posts about choice a -

Why is there no logical connection between outnumbering and period.....doesn't a longer period mean more letters written and hence resulting in outnumbering...??

Also, ing modifier is a verb modifier , It should be modifying verb or whole clause ...why do you say its modifying the noun - 'period'?