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Subject-modifier placement — worked example

Learn the best way to approach a subject-modifier placement question on the SAT. You may want to look for subject-modifier placement errors if the blank is longer than a few words or the choices rearrange words or phrases into different orders. Remember, the subject ALWAYS goes right next to the modifier.  Created by David Rheinstrom.

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Video transcript

- [David] Hey, test takers. Let's take a look at this question from the reading and writing tests. The cuisine of the Mapuche people of Chile often includes a traditional seasoning called merken. A blend of ground spices, and smoked chili peppers, blank. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of standard English? All right, I'm scanning the answer choices now, but feel free to pause the video and take a whack at this question on your own should you feel so moved. So the question here asks about the conventions of standard English, which means we should be focused on the grammar of the sentence, but which grammar convention is being tested here? A look at the choices can tell us. Here we see that the contents of the blank is pretty long, actually, and each choice includes the same words, but scramble around in different orders. We should also notice that preceding the blank, we have a descriptive phrase, a blend of ground spices and smoked chili peppers, comma blank. Friends, my keen deductive sense is tingling, because this is a textbook example of a modifier placement question. These questions work off your understanding of modifiers, a broad grammatical category that includes adjectives and adverbs, but also, in this case, introductory descriptive phrases. The thing to remember about these phrases is that they're not describing the whole sentence, just one noun, and the noun being described has to come right next to the modifier, otherwise you'll end up with nonsense. Let me explain. First, we need to understand the modifying introductory phrase that comes before the blank. What's it trying to say? And from that, what noun is going to make the most sense there? Let me give you an example. Spewing greasy black smoke, Bronwyn brought the old car to a screeching halt. At first glance, this sentence seems fine, but notice what comes after the comma. The noun that falls closest to the modifying introductory phrase, spewing greasy black smoke is Bronwyn. And in the context of this sentence, that makes way less sense for a person to spew smoke than it does for an old screechy car, but we can change it by rearranging very little. Spewing greasy black smoke, Bronwyn's old car came to a screeching halt and I hear you saying, David, this breaks your one rule. Bronwyn is still the first noun after the comma. How is this any different? But when you make a noun possessive, as I've done by putting the apostrophe S after Bronwyn, it turns it into an adjective just like old before car. So the first noun to come after the modifying phrase is car and now we're describing a smoking wreck of an automobile that belongs to Bronwyn. Let's go back to our question and apply this. Let me read the question again super quick and then I'm going to go through the choices and identify the first noun that I see. Okay, the cuisine of the Mapuche people of Chile often includes a traditional seasoning called merken, a blend of ground spices and smoked chili peppers, comma blank. Okay, so we're looking for an answer choice that is merken, that is a spice mix. So let's, let's go through it. Choice A, cacho de cabra, or goat's horn chili, is the primary ingredient of merken. No, not a spice mix. That's a component of the spice mix. Cross it out. Choice B, merken primarily consists of cacho de cabra, or goats horn chili. Okay, merken is the first noun here, and we know that that's a traditional seasoning with multiple components. That's a spice mix. This is our answer on test day, I'd circle this and move on, but let's just knock out the remaining two just for the heck of it, you and me. Okay, choice C, the primary ingredient merken is cacho de cabra or goat's horn chili. The primary ingredient is not a spice mix, it's just a component, it's not the answer. Choice D, merken's primary ingredient is cacho de cabra or goat's horn chili. Ooh, this one's tricky. It's like Bronwyn's old car. Merken's primary ingredient. So merken is being used as a possessive noun making it behave like an adjective. The first noun to appear is actually ingredient, which is not a spice mix, just a component of the spice mix. Knock this one out. And B is our answer. I think the big top tip here is to watch out for those possessive nouns. They can really trip you up and disguise the noun being modified if you're not reading carefully enough. I think these are fun questions, honestly, which is maybe a strange thing to say about an SAT question type, but the wrong answers can occasionally veer into absurdity which is always a source of joy for me. Another thing I like about these grammar questions is that if you can figure out what rule is being tested, the answer can just jump out at you. Only one choice will fix the issue, and that's the answer. Regardless of how you yourself feel about these questions, I remain confident that you can crush them on test day. Good luck out there. You've got this.