noun modifier

[kedieez967]

Following sentence is from Manhattan Sentence Correction.

Some critics of the Olympian Party candidate Zeus Pater's are pleased that he has chosen Artemis Rhodes, the prefect of Alexandria, to be his running mate; as many commentators have pointed out, her views on social issues are more in line with the Olympian Party platform than are Pater's.

The sentence comes from page-195 in my PDF file, or you can use the key word "Alexandria" to find it.

"the prefect of Alexandria" modifies Artemis Rhodes, but AR is a person, but the modifier is an abstract noun. So i think it is a little weird.

could somebody give me some clarifications at this problem? Thanks.

I think this time i come the right folder ^_^

[Chelsey Cooley]

Yes, this the right place for this question! Can you clarify what you mean by "abstract noun", though? The phrase "the prefect of Alexandria" refers correctly to a person, because a prefect is a type of person (you could infer from context that "prefect" is some sort of political position). The GMAT is unlikely to test you on that particular kind of meaning issue, though: if they want you to notice that a modifier is in the wrong place, they'll be far more obvious than that about the logical mismatch.

[kedieez967]

sorry, i am not a native English speaker, so i could not figure out that a prefect is a type of person. if it refer to a kind of person, it is ok here.

as written in Manhattan Prep SC, the abstract noun refer to something, such as interaction, communication, eruption, or even love, that are not concrete objects.

so:
correct: The bouquet of flowers WAS a gift of love.
incorrect: The bouquet of flowers WAS a giving of love. - bouquet cannot be a giving.

Thank you all the same.

[tim]

Yes, a prefect is a person. Technically the term for this is an appositive, and in this case even if you didn't know what a prefect was, you could have have determined that it was a person based on the fact that it's clearly a noun (because of the "the") and is set off by commas (therefore clearly referring to Rhodes). Note that none of this analysis depends on knowing the specific term for what's going on. As Ron says all the time on the forums, knowing the terms is not important and often just gets in the way of understanding what's going on in a sentence.