<p>I missed this question on page 479 of CB Blue Book:</p>
<p>The labor union [is negotiating]A a contract with the hospital [that]B [will satisfy]C the demands of the workers and [be acceptable to] all levels of the management. [no error]E. </p>
<p>The answer is E but I chose B because I recently went through the Barrons SAT II Writing book and it said that a pronoun must be placed closest to its antecedent or else it will be an 'ambiguous pronoun'. In question 13, the word 'that' refers to the contract but is placed next to 'hospital' so I thought 'that' is an example of a misplaced or ambiguous pronoun.</p>
<p>Nope, the 'that' is not an ambiguous pronoun. It is clearly referring to the contract. For a pronoun to be ambiguous it should work with both the nouns. Here it is pretty clear that the sentence will make no sense if 'that' reperesents the hospital and not the contract.</p>
<p>Paul Marshall, [whose]A Barbadian background [has influenced]B her writing, [describes]C many details of life in the Caribbean Islands [vividly]D in her novels and short stories. [No Error]E</p>
<p>The answer is E, no error. However, I thought that vividly was placed in the wrong spot. It know it's modifying the verb "describes" (she vividly describes the many details...) so I thought it should be near "describes." Apparently not. Can someone explain this to me? You can have an adverb that modifies a word that is 10 words away?</p>
<p>The number of words doesn't matter. "Many details" is functioning as an object. The addition of prepositional phrases doesn't change this. It's like you can say, "He ate the cake happily." Hopefully this helped.</p>
<p>No, actually. That would be incorrect because "the birthday cake that was set on the table near Alex" wouldn't be functioning as a single unit anymore. "That was set on the table" is an adjectival clause that's modifying "birthday cake". In this case, it DOES sound like the cake was set happily on the table.</p>
<p>By removing two words, however, your sentence would work.</p>
<p>"He ate the birthday cake on the table near Alex happily."</p>
<p>Do you see the difference? Again, hope this helped.</p>