Foundations of Verbal Drill 4.4 Question 4

[deepakv158]

The following example

"A company that specializes in the analysis of body language purports, from a one-minute video of a person's speech, to be able to ascertain numerous truths about the person."

After removing the prepositional phrases, reads

" A company that specializes, to be able to ascertain numerous truths" -- the meaning is not clear to me

Is this the right usage? If so, what is the meaning conveyed here?

Thanks!

[RonPurewal]

Nope. You killed the verb, too. You can't kill the verb; that's part of the core of the sentence.

"That specializes in the analysis of body language" is one giant modifier. (You can break that down into 3 smaller modifiers, but why would anyone want to do that?)
"From a 1-minute video of a person's speech" is also a modifier.
If you take those out, you're left with "A company ... purports ... to be able ...", which makes perfect sense.

[deepakv158]

Thank you

[RonPurewal]

Sure.