Marconi’s conception of the radio

[chetan86]

Hi Ron,

Your posts are very much helpful.

I correctly answered this question by selecting options C.

But I have some doubts regarding option D.

Option D is given as:
Marconi conceived of the radio to be a tool for private conversation, a substitute for the telephone, which has become precisely the opposite

So when I come across this option, I checked 'which' refers to what? It can either refer to private conversation or telephone(because it is in modifier phrase).

Then I checked what non-under line portion will say if option D is correct.
"[private conversation or telephone], which has become precisely the opposite"

Neither telephone nor private conversation makes sense with this option so I marked it as wrong.

So my question is the way I marked option D is correct??
Do you see any knowledge gap in my above explanation?

Regards,
Chetan

[RonPurewal]

Yeah.
"A(n) X, which has become the opposite..." is pretty much nonsense, regardless of the particular identity of "X".
I.e., if it "has become the opposite" of X, then it's not X.

The sentence would have to express that something was intended to be an X but instead became something else. A "which" modifier, attached directly to "X", can't do that.

[chetan86]

Thanks Ron.

[Haibara]

Marconi’s conception of the radio was as a substitute for the telephone, a tool for private conversation; instead, it is precisely the opposite, a tool for communicating with a large, public audience.
A. Marconi’s conception of the radio was as a substitute for the telephone, a tool for private conversation; instead, it is

Ron, I think the main problem with Choice A is neither the redundancy of "Marconi’s conception of" nor the modifier ambiguity pertaining to "a tool for private conversation", but rather the "as" after "was". If the "as" were removed from Choice A, A would be correct, right? Also, is it fine to say "X is as Y", where "as" is preposition?

Ron, please give a thought.
Thanks very much.

[RonPurewal]

"Was as..." is ungrammatical. You're right about that.

If you remove "as", though, you get a nonsense sentence.
"Marconi's conception ... was a substitute for the telephone..."
Um...?
Taken literally"”as all of these sentences must be"”this sentence says that someone's idea ("conception") was actually a physical substitute for the telephone. In other words, you could replace the telephone with an idea from someone's imagination.
o_O

Nope.

[Haibara]

（＾∇＾）
Ron，the last interpretation is very amusing.
Thanks for great explanation.

[RonPurewal]

You're welcome.

[Manihar.sidharth]

Hi Ron
Can you please state the difference between these two clauses :
a)Marconi conceived of the radio as a substitute for the telephone.
b)Marconi conceived of the radio to be a substitute for the telephone.

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron
Can you please state the difference between these two clauses :
a)Marconi conceived of the radio as a substitute for the telephone.
b)Marconi conceived of the radio to be a substitute for the telephone.

Thanks

(a) makes sense; (b) doesn't.

"Conceived ... to be" isn't an idiom, so (b) can only be interpreted as "He did xxxx to be yyyy""”i.e., a construction in which "to be yyyy" describes the purpose of action xxxx.
So, choice (b) is saying "Marconi wanted to be a substitute for the telephone, so, to achieve that purpose, he conceived of the radio." Huh? Nah.

[cshen02]

In B,

the telephone, a tool for private conversation, but which is

I understand when I see a conjunction (but in this case), I should think about parallelism. What if there isn't a conjunction, then the "which" refers to "conversation", but not "a tool", I guess?

To generalize, in Noun 1, appositive/ non-essential modifier that ends with Noun 2, WHICH..., WHICH refers to Noun 2
:)

[RonPurewal]

The terminology is a bit much for me there, but it appears your conclusion is accurate.

[YidanX684]

No you are not:

1) every single word you change, in any sentence ever, changes the meaning. please don't fall into the trap of assuming you have to adhere to the meaning of the original. not only is grammar far more important than meaning, but if the original sentence is wrong then you HAVE to change the meaning, even if only slightly..

2) you can string two modifiers along after a noun without a problem. the problem arises when something other than another modifier comes between a modifier and its noun. this is what your example does, but please note that the following sentence is fine:

Bears eat berries from Bavaria that are sweet.

hi,tim
i am a little do not understand that (2),what does that mean?
i think Bears eat berries that are sweet does not have something other than another modifier between a modifier and its noun,right?
thanks

[tim]

It depends on whether you want "that are sweet" to modify "bears" or "berries". It cannot modify "bears" because the verb comes between the modifier and "bears". Therefore it must refer to "berries".

[RonPurewal]

Well... it's also possible for this order to be inverted, in order to put a really long sentence element last.

For instance:
Words that offend me appear in the article. (normal order)
Words appear in the article that offend me. (weird—you won't see this)

BUT:
Words that offend me because of their implications about people of my racial admixture appear in the article. (Not technically incorrect... but basically impossible to read! I bet you had to read this multiple times.)
Words appear in the article that offend me because of their implications about people of my racial admixture. (Easier to read in reverse order.)

Fortunately, this is a multiple-choice test, so you will NEVER have to make the decision about where to put these modifiers.
Just pick the choice(s) in which the modifiers are CLOSEST to the things they're supposed to modify.

[RonPurewal]

As an example of a problem in which a modifier appears really, really, really far away from the thing it's supposed to modify—but in which it's not any closer in any other choices—check out #50 in the OG Diagnostic chapter.