Kibbitzer 15 | Which Verb for the Adverb? |
Original | Revision |
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... immigrant families could contain distant relatives immigrating from their home country as a result of housing and communicating problems. | ... immigrant families could, as a result of housing and communication problems, contain distant relatives from their home country, |
Making it clear which adverb modifies which verb is a recurrent problem uncovered in 1-2-1 consutlations. Here, it is not clear in the original whether the adverb phrase 'as a result of housing and communicating problems' modifies the verb 'contains' or the verb 'immigrating'. It took only a little discussion to establish that irt was the verb 'contains' that was modified: with the adverb phrase moved to show the modification unambiguously, the phrase 'immigrating from their home country' could be simplified without loss of meaning to 'from their home country'.
11th December 1996 | Consultant: Tim Johns |
Back to Tim Johns EAP page |