Driver

[swapna.rajanish7]

The below questions are from sentence correction guide, chapter 2.pg no 25.

1.The driver took the people for a ride who had been waiting

the people who had been waiting for a ride

The answer to the above is C. I understand why it is not A. Not able to understand the explanation why they haven't chosen B. Can some one also please say the right way to reconstruct the sentence?

2.She is the most dedicated gardener on the block, everyday watering the more than 50 plants in her yard.

everyday watering more than the 50 plants in her yard


The book says A.Am not sure how it is right to have "the" after "watering".Can some one explain??

[tim]

1. The reason B is wrong is because the "for a ride" part is ambiguous in terms of what it modifies. Did the driver take the people for a ride (if so, what were the people waiting for?), or were the people waiting for a ride (if so, where did the driver take them?). My best reconstruction is "the driver took for a ride the people who had been waiting"; this still leaves unanswered the question of what the people were waiting for, but the meaning of the sentence makes it pretty clear that they were waiting for the ride the driver took them on.

2. I'm guessing you're not nearly as concerned about "the" after "watering" as you are about "the" in front of "more than 50". If we left out the "more than 50" this sentence would probably seem just fine, right? :) Sure A sounds strange, but a lot of correct writing sounds weird to the ear because we tend to speak differently (and more incorrectly) than we write. "more than 50" just describes the plants by telling us how many, in the same way "green" could describe the plants by telling us what color they are. If "green" could go between "the" and "plants" we should just as easily be able to replace it with "more than 50".

[renukachopra]

i m still confused how watering the more than 50 is different from watering more than the 50 plants

[tim]

Ask yourself in each case how many plants there are in her yard. "watering the more than 50" means there are more than 50 plants and she is watering them. "watering more than the 50" means that there are exactly 50 plants and she is watering them as well as something "more". In each case the "the" tells you where to start reading to figure out how many plants there are..