shankar245 Wrote:The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built on a spectacular scale, with more than 75 carefully engineered structures, of up to 600 rooms each, connected by a complex regional system of roads.
this is the actual correct version of the sentence; note that there is a comma in front of "with".
i believe that the original poster mistranscribed the problem somewhat. the underline should start at "scale"; some of the choices have a comma, while others don't.
Here with modifies India's richest state i.e punjab.
generally, when you have
comma + prep phrase, that modifier should describe the
whole idea of the clause that precedes it. i.e., it's describing the notion that punjab is the richest state, not just describing the state itself.
as another example, if you had the following sentence --
punjab is india's richest state, with an area of xxxxx square miles-- it would be incorrect, because the modifier doesn't have anything to do with punjab's status as india's richest state. (if the modifier just had to describe the state itself, it would technically be fine.)
In the correct sentence the modifier "with...structures" modifies the settlements.How do we ensure grammatically that it modifies only the settlements and nothing else
given the above (and given the way in which the correct answer is actually punctuated), this modifier likewise describes the entire idea that precedes it.
,with and with?
Please help!
if there's a comma, the modifier should describe the entire preceding clause. if there isn't one, it should describe only the noun or action that precedes it.
in the latter case, you may have to use common sense to decide whether the modifier describes a noun or an action. for instance,
i read the book on the subway --> here, "on the subway" describes the action of reading the book, not the book itself.
i read the book on the table --> here, "on the table" describes the book.
