Dangling Modifier? SC Startegy Guide Pg.49 Q no.8

[geenaojoseph]

Hi,

"After all the gardening we did, the sun shining on the flowerbeds makes a beautiful sight."

Would you please explain what the clause " After all the gardening we did" functions as? Is it a modifier or is it just a clause?

Thanks,
Geena

[RonPurewal]

Hi,

"After all the gardening we did, the sun shining on the flowerbeds makes a beautiful sight."

Would you please explain what the clause " After all the gardening we did" functions as? Is it a modifier or is it just a clause?

Thanks,
Geena

it's equivalent to just "after ... the gardening", so it's a modifier.

[geenaojoseph]

Hi,

"After all the gardening we did, the sun shining on the flowerbeds makes a beautiful sight."

Would you please explain what the clause " After all the gardening we did" functions as? Is it a modifier or is it just a clause?

Thanks,
Geena

it's equivalent to just "after ... the gardening", so it's a modifier.

Thank you, rephrasing made sense. Could you please specify what it modifies?

[jnelson0612]

Hi Geena,
My personal take is that it's an adverbial modifier and is modifying the entire clause after the comma.

[abhisheks901]

Question : After all the gardening we did, the sun shining on the flowerbeds make a beautiful sight. (SC guide, 6th edition, page 51, chapter 3)

Correct Answer : After all the gardening we did, the sun shining on the flowerbeds MAKES a beautiful sight.

According to me, answer should be: After all the gardening THAT we did, the sun shining on the flowerbeds MAKES a beautiful sight.

Please tell why "that" has not come here? also please tell the usage of "that" and "as", where they come and where can we drop them?


Thanks

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Giving a full description of the myriad usage of the words 'that' and 'as' is both beyond my knowledge and my resources. Take a look at a good dictionary and you'll see how intricate and complicated language can be: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/that

However, the good news is that you don't need to know all that to do well on the GMAT exam. Both of these phrases are acceptable: 'after all the gardening that we did' and 'after all the gardening we did'. The rule here is that we can omit 'that' when the noun it's referring to is the object of the following verb. That might sound complicated, but take these (correct) examples:
1. This is the dog that bit me.
2. This is the dog that I bit.
In both sentences the word 'that' is referring to 'the dog'. However, in 1, the dog is the subject (it did the biting), and in 2 the dog is the object (it got bitten). Therefore:
1a. This is the dog bit me. INCORRECT
2a. This is the dog I bit. CORRECT

[JbhB682]

Question : After all the gardening we did, the sun shining on the flowerbeds make a beautiful sight. (SC guide, 6th edition, page 51, chapter 3)

Correct Answer : After all the gardening we did, the sun shining on the flowerbeds MAKES a beautiful sight.

Hi - I have a question on the "meaning" of the accurate answer

Per my understanding
a) the red is an adverbial modifiers affecting the verb "makes"
b) the red is an adverbial modifiers NOT modifying the blue

Question : how does this sentence make sense from a meaning perspective

how can the activity of "gardening" per se, make for the sun a more beautiful sight ?

Shouldn't the activity of "gardening" , make for the sun SHINING ON THE FLOWER BEDS to be a more beautiful sight

It seems to me that the red should modify the blue from a meaning perspective

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

When it comes to subordinators such as 'after', 'although', 'while', I would encourage you not to think of them as modifiers. They are there basically to connect two ideas. Here, the meaning is that there is a connected sequence of actions. Take a look at page 65 in your SC guide for more on this (chapter 4: modifiers). The sentence is fine.

Sure, you can think of the phrase 'after all the gardening we did' as an adverbial modifier, modifying the main verb of the sentence (makes). But be careful about the meaning here. As you point out, it doesn't make sense to say that our gardening caused to sun to be beautiful. However, that's because you've missed out the essential modifier 'shining on the flowerbeds'. It's not any old sun that's beautiful, it's this sun, here, shining on the work that we did. However, this is getting a bit complicated.

There's a wider point about leaving out modifiers and expecting a sentence to make sense. Take this example: 'One of my best friends is German.' If I literally take out all the modifiers from this sentence I'm left with the subject-verb pair 'One is.' Of course, this has just about no meaning but, grammatically, it's okay: it has a subject and verb that agree and it is a complete sentence. All modifiers add to the meaning of a sentence, so be careful about leaving them out an expecting the sentence to make just as much sense.