Turning away from literary realism to write romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, in 1909 Selma Lagerlöf was the novelist who became the first woman and was also the first Swedish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

A. Turning away from literary realism to write romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, in 1909 Selma Lagerlöf was the novelist who became the first woman and was also the first Swedish writer to win
B. She turned away from literary realism and wrote romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, and novelist Selma Lagerlöf in 1909 became the first woman as well as the first Swedish writer that won
C. Selma Lagerlöf was a novelist who turned away from literary realism to write romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, and in 1909 she became the first woman in addition to the first Swedish writer winning
D. A novelist who turned away from literary realism to write romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, Selma Lagerlöf became in 1909 the first woman and also the first Swedish writer to win
E. As a novelist, Selma Lagerlöf turned away from literary realism and wrote romantic stories about the peasant life and landscape of northern Sweden, in 1909 becoming the first woman and also the first Swedish writer that won

OA: D

is there a quick way to solve this? I was able to get the correct answer; but I feel that I was wasting alot of time and that my reasons for eliminating the other answer choices are not legit

a) misplaced modifier, needs to refer to Selma
b) not too sure exactly why this is wrong -- i just marked this off because I did not like how the pronoun 'she' came before the subject, 'selma'.
c) again, not sure if my reasons are legitimate. but, i didnt like 'Selma was a novelist..'; i also felt the use of 'in addition to' is incorrect here. is the use of the modifier, 'winning the nobel prize', correctly used here? in terms of tense?
d) correct
e) the use of 'as a novelist' and the placement of the second modifier, 'in 1909...' both seem odd and therefore incorrect.

any additional insights you may have willbe appreciated. thanks!

you spelled your own nickname wrong. heh heh. watch it!


perfect.
since it's a subject-less initial modifier, it automatically refers to whatever immediately follows the comma. since selma doesn't immediately follow the comma, this is wrong.


yeah.
actually, the way the parallelism is written here, "she" doesn't mean selma.
if i say "he wrote the first half, and jim wrote the second half", then the one thing of which you can be absolutely sure is that jim didn't write the first half.


interesting.
my reading here is that "in addition to" breaks up the construction completely, into 2 independent parts. therefore, selma was "the first woman" (in the garden of eden!) in addition to blah blah blah.
i don't like "was a novelist" either; it seems to imply that selma stopped being a novelist at some point, becoming something else.
"winning" is incorrect here; it should be "to win". i would classify that as pure idiomatic usage.
very good!


yes.


"as a novelist" implies that you're going to talk about selma in some other capacity later ("as a novelist, she did X; as a woman, she did Y"). so we don't want that.
yeah, "in 1909" is in the wrong place. i'd place it after "becoming" if i had to throw it somewhere in that modifier.
the worst thing about this choice, though, is "that". you cannot EVER use "that" to refer to people, even though we do so all the time in spoken english.

Ron,

From your explanation, I got the answer as D, but initially I rejected D because of the redundant usage "and also". I've not seen this usage ever being correct in SC questions. Please explain when or in what reference is this "and also" usage becomes redundant.

Thanks!

GeeMate.

"X and Y" is normally used to indicate two different things. (if you said "the first woman and the first Swedish writer", without the "also", that would normally imply 2 different people)

"X and also Y" is normally used to bestow two descriptions on the SAME person or thing (notice that both of these descriptions are meant to describe Selma Lagerlof).

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Hi, Ron,

From your explanation I cited, I find that a prep question does not apply to your rule. Could you explain that?

This is a prep question, having no copyright problem :)

Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress that made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also established the Library of Congress.

A. Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress that made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also established
B. The act of Congress, which was approved April 24, 1800, making provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also established
C. The act of Congress approved April 24, 1800, which made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., and established
D. Approved April 24, 1800, making provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., the act of Congress also established
E. Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also establishing

The OA is A.

Look at this sentense: Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress......

The act does not immediately follow the modifier "approved", why is it still correct?? Plz help.

in that example, the initial modifier is "Approved April 24, 1800," which is followed immediately by "the act of Congress". so that follows our rule perfectly.

--

it should be noted that, if the initial modifier is a prepositional phrase, then this rule doesn't apply -- the prepositional phrase will modify the entire action that follows. for instance,
in 1994, i graduated from high school
is a perfectly valid sentence.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Ron - just a clarification.

From the SC book, I thought if you had Present Participle modifier, the subject didn't have to touch, it only had to be in the sentence.

Or is Present Participle Initial modifier something special

thanks much.

yeah -- if you have a present participle modifier in front of a comma, it must be talking about the following subject.

in fact, the same is true for all four of the following types of initial modifiers:

(1) Starting with –ING, or starting with preposition + -ING (especially in + -ING)
(2) Starting with past participle
(3) NOUN + MODIFIERS (i.e., not a clause)
(4) Starting with an ADJECTIVE

examples:

(1)
WRONG:
Coming home from school, the wind blew me off my bike.
RIGHT:
Coming home from school, I was blown off my bike by the wind.

(2)
WRONG:
Thrown from a passing car, the blaze was ignited by a stray cigarette.
RIGHT:
Thrown from a passing car, a stray cigarette ignited the blaze.

(3)
WRONG:
A survivor of the Holocaust, Primo Levi’s stories demonstrate a resolute determination in the face of tragedy and adversity.
RIGHT:
A survivor of the Holocaust, Primo Levi wrote stories that demonstrate a resolute determination in the face of tragedy and adversity.

(4)
WRONG:
Fresh from the tree, it was difficult to eat the mangoes because they were not yet ripe.
RIGHT:
Fresh from the tree, the mangoes were difficult to eat because they were not yet ripe.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Thank you - it makes a lot of sense! Thanks Ron for explaining, the examples help a lot!

Great!

_________________
Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

Hi ron ,The portion quoted above was 1 of the reasons why you eliminated option C.But The MGMAT strategy guide states that noun + present participle is a valid sentence structure where the present participle is a modifier .

right, in general, but that sort of modifier can't mean what this sentence is intended to mean. if you want to say that someone was the first person to accomplish some feat, then that's how you have to do it -- "the first X to do Y".
"the first X doing Y" is not idiomatic. this doesn't mean that all such structures will be unidiomatic -- it just means that this one is.

--

in general, idioms can be determined by MEANING as well as by strict convention -- in many cases, there will be different forms of an idiom that mean different things.

random example:
"determined by" and "determined from" are both legitimate idioms, but they have different meanings.
"X is/was determined by Y" means that Y actually causes/caused X.
"X is/was determined from Y" means that someone looks at evidence Y and, from that evidence, figures out X.

for instance:
your personality can be determined from your handwriting --> this sentence makes sense (people can look at your handwriting and deduce facts about your personality).
your personality can be determined by your handwriting --> this sentence doesn't make sense (it implies that the way you write actually causes your personality to be a certain way).
but...
some people think that your personality is determined by your genes --> this sentence makes sense (people to think that your genetic makeup causes you to have certain personality traits)
some people think that your personality is determined from your genes --> this doesn't make sense (it implies that people are looking at your genes and using them to guess what your personality is like).

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Thank You Ron

Thanks Ron!

_________________
Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

Hi,

My first post here at MGMAT :-)

My problem with the OA for the thread-starter question here -



"...became in 1909..." doesn't sound alright to me. I can't point the exact grammar rule for this. But, somehow my ears tells me that it's odd ... daresay wrong.

Am I wrong in saying that it's wrong? Kindly explain.

Thanks