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lionKing1976
 
 

Sentence ending with adjective form.

by lionKing1976 Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:02 pm

Antigenic shift refers to the combination of two different strains of influenza, different than antigenic drift, which refers to the natural mutation of a single strain of influenza


The underlined portion above is wrong. OE given by MGMAT is as below.

"This choice uses the incorrect comparison phrase "different than"; the correct phrase is "different from." In addition, the simple comma between "influenza" and "different" provides an inadequate transition between the two parts of the sentence; the addition of a conjunction such as "and is" (e.g., "... influenza, [and is] different ...") is necessary here."


I understand the explanation. But if correct 1st problem by using "different from", i think sentence will correct as part of the sentence starting with "different from" will become adjective phrase.




Please correct.

Antigenic shift refers to the combination of two different strains ofinfluenza , different from antigenic drift, which refers to the natural mutation of a single strain of influenza
RonPurewal
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by RonPurewal Mon Aug 11, 2008 2:56 am

nope - if you make just that one fix, then the sentence still has problems.

specifically:
that sort of modifier - "different from antigenic drift, ..." - (which is called an appositive modifier, if you care about linguistic terminology) - is generally attributed to the immediately preceding noun.
so, depending on whether you take the "immediately preceding noun" to be the literally preceding noun or the entire noun phrase, you're saying one of the following things:
* (2 different strains of) influenza is what's different from antigenic drift
* the combination of 2 different strains of influenza is what's different from antigenic drift
the first is just wrong, and the second is wrong enough to be incorrect from the standpoint of sentence correction. remember, you should be interpreting these things very literally: the TERM "antigenic shift" differs from the TERM "antigenic drift". (the reason you know the sentence is about TERMS is because of its use of "refers to", which we wouldn't use if we were saying antigenic shift IS the phenomenon.)

to maintain parallelism, you need a sentence that says unambiguously that antigenic shift is what's different from antigenic drift. to do that, you need a conjunction (as mentioned above), because antigenic shift is the subject of the first sentence.
navdeep_bajwa
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Re: Sentence ending with adjective form.

by navdeep_bajwa Thu Jan 28, 2010 10:42 am

Antigenic shift refers to the combination of two different strains of influenza; in contrast, antigenic drift refers to the natural mutation of a single strain of influenza.

A influenza; in contrast, antigenic drift refers to the natural mutation of a single strain of influenza
B influenza, different than the natural mutation of a single strain, known as antigenic drift
C influenza, in contrast to the natural mutation of a single strain, known as antigenic drift
D influenza, different than antigenic drift, which refers to the natural mutation of a single strain of influenza
E influenza; in contrast to antigenic drift, which refers to the natural mutation of a single strain of influenza

Is this sentence correct for option E

influenza, in contrast to antigenic drift, which refers to the natural mutation of a single strain of influenza
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Re: Sentence ending with adjective form.

by aps_asks Sat Mar 17, 2012 8:04 am

Hi Instructors ,

Why is the part after the semicolon in Choice E ) not a compete sentence?

Whereas the part after the semicolon in Choice A ) is a complete sentence .
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Re: Sentence ending with adjective form.

by RonPurewal Wed Apr 04, 2012 5:57 pm

aps_asks Wrote:Hi Instructors ,

Why is the part after the semicolon in Choice E ) not a compete sentence?

Whereas the part after the semicolon in Choice A ) is a complete sentence .


before addressing the actual question, a comment:
if you're asking this question, then you are missing a crucial skill that you must acquire before starting to analyze sentence correction problems in earnest. specifically, if you can't reliably tell a sentence from a non-sentence -- or, equivalently, if you can't reliably distinguish between modifiers and the main clause -- that's something you need to learn how to do, BEFORE you start jumping into more complicated analyses.

the part after the semicolon in (e) is just
preposition + noun + , + modifier
... that's not a sentence.

the part after the semicolon in (a) is
prep phrase + , + SUBJECT + VERB + other stuff
... in which the subject is "antigenic drift" and the verb is "refers".
this is a sentence.

if you can't reliably distinguish these sorts of things, you should try to find practice exercises. the internet is awash in such things; for instance, you might try searching "sentence fragment exercises" and see what comes up.