<p>Hi, </p>
<p>I was doing a sentence error identification section in Barron's 2400, and I came across these two questions which I got wrong. I'm dissatisfied with the book's explanation for the correct answers for these, so if someone could please explain these answers, I would appreciate it very much :)</p>
<ol>
<li>A-(In) this heartbreaking case that involved several cousins, Judge Klein pointed out that the B-(inauspicious) outcomes have been determined C-(largely) by D-(her) earlier, foolhardy actions.
E-(No error)</li>
</ol>
<p>Solution from book: "D Ambiguous possessive pronoun. Her lacks a clear antecedent."
What else could "her" refer to? The only personal nouns are "several cousins" and "Judge Klein", of which only "Judge Klein" is singular...</p>
<ol>
<li>Despite Mitchells A-(steadfast) attempts to mitigate his B-(friends) ongoing rivalry, C-(he) was ultimately unable to mediate D-(their) long-overdue reconciliation. E-(No error)</li>
</ol>
<p>Solution from book: "C Pronoun error. Pronoun he lacks an antecedent. Mitchells is a possessive adjective and, therefore, not a proper antecedent."
But then, by the same logic, wouldn't "his" in "his friends' ongoing rivalry" not have an antecedent either? </p>
<p>Thank you all for your time!</p>
<p>Weird* sentence error identification questions… lol that’s embarassing</p>
<ol>
<li><p>“Her” could refer to “outcomes.” Outcomes aren’t people. </p></li>
<li><p>Similar case here…“attempts” aren’t a male named Mitchell.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hopefully that makes sense…</p>
<p>I don’t get that… sorry haha…
I know outcomes are not people, so how can you use him or her as an object pronoun for a thing? Isn’t an outcome an “it”? Besides, how can outcomes carry out “foolhardy actions”?</p>
<p>No, I guess that the HER in the first question would involve any girl of the several cousins and the pronoun does not clearly represent the exact person who committed the actions.</p>
<p>Don’t use Barron’s questions. Use the Blue Book and other CB materials for practice questions.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, ‘Her’ is not a misplaced modifier and cannot be referring to ‘outcomes’ as JKJeremy had hinted (which was carelessly wrong)(JkJeremy, if you read this, don’t take it negatively please. I still need you to feedback my essays. haha), because the sentence was formulated such that ‘her’ and ‘outcomes’ share a cause and effect relationship. </p>
<p>It is grammatically understood that ‘her’ cannot refer to ‘outcomes’ because of such a (cause and effect) relationship (e.g. we understand that ‘his’ cannot refer to ‘outcome’ in "John debated on the topic of agriculture and the positive outcome was determined by his clear articulation.) <— bad example but you get the point</p>
<p>Thus, the sentence is not wrong because ‘her’ refers to ‘outcomes’ (Misplaced modifier) but rather because of another grammatical error known as an ambiguous pronoun (as Sanjay1023 had correctly described).
^ forgive me for the circumlocution.</p>
<p>In the case of this sentence, ‘her’ is an ambiguous pronoun because ‘her’ can relate to either any of the cousins or the judge (since we do not know the gender of any of them, any one of them could supposedly be the ‘her’ referred to in the question, thus making the true message of the sentence ambiguous). Remember, a critical rule in grammar is to make this less ambiguous so that the reader does not misinterpret the sentence.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You are correct that “her” isn’t a misplaced modifier. However, it is an ambiguous reference. No matter the details and/or terminology we use, in this sentence it is unclear who or what “her” really is.</p>
<p>Intuitively, we know, but in straight-up grammatical terms we do not.</p>
<p>Alright that makes much more sense… thank you guys! Can anyone help out with my second question?</p>
<p>About that first sentence: isn’t it possible for a sentence to be grammatically correct but still wrong? I don’t see a grammatical error. To me, the sentence unambiguously refers to the judge’s earlier fool-hardiness. Is that what the author intended? Probably not. But is it what the author said? I think it is. Maybe the judge was accepting responsibility for having paroled the lot of them the last time they appeared in court! </p>
<p>Or we could just skip this one and get back to the blue book :)</p>
<p>@jkjeremy I stated that it was an ambiguous reference in the final paragraph of my response just now.</p>
<p>As Pckeller said, let’s skip it and get back to the blue book.</p>