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AP English Language and Composition: Comprehension Drill 1, Problem 4. In lines 41 through 45, "composed" modifies which word?

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AP English Language and Composition 1.4 Comprehension 376 Views


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Description:

AP English Language and Composition: Comprehension Drill 1, Problem 4. In lines 41 through 45, "composed" modifies which word?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by Asiatic prairies,

00:07

where the buffalos roam in search of wonton soup.

00:10

Yep. Good stuff. Love that wonton soup...

00:13

[ mumbles ]

00:19

All right, you done reading?

00:20

[ mumbles ]

00:30

[ mumbling continues ]

00:39

All right. And... you're done. Whether you like it or not.

00:43

In lines 41 through 45, "composed"

00:46

modifies which word? And here are the potential answers.

00:49

Five-dollar words... Blah, blah, blah...

00:52

And let's just go.

00:54

So, to make this easier, we'll lift the chunk in question out of

00:57

the rest so that we can check it out in isolation.

01:00

Right here.

01:01

Ah, there we go. Okay, so, that's better.

01:03

Wow, these Asiatic prairies sound... relaxing.

01:06

No time for relaxing, though. Gotta focus.

01:09

Uh-huh. Okay, there's the word "composed,"

01:12

which in this case is being used as a verb and is the

01:15

predicate of the sentence. So the question becomes

01:18

who exactly is doing the composing?

01:20

Which noun is the subject that goes along with the verb "compose"?

01:24

It looks like the thing that makes this question a little tricky is the use of the

01:27

following interrupting phrases:

01:30

"the wandering nomads from the distant Asiatic prairies,

01:32

enjoying a free and easy existence as fighters and hunters..."

01:36

Hmm. We're rethinking our dream of being a nomad.

01:40

Fighting and hunting all day sounds, well, kind of stressful.

01:42

Sorry, we're really trying to focus here.

01:44

Since the interrupting phrases are set apart from the rest of the sentence with commas,

01:48

we can ignore them when trying to figure out which noun is the subject.

01:52

The commas signal that we can remove the phrases without changing the basic meaning of the sentence.

01:57

So, listen, we'll prove it.

01:58

Our own ancestors composed songs which

02:02

celebrated the mighty deeds of their greatest leaders and yadda yadda yadda.

02:06

See, it totally makes sense.

02:08

Since we know that no words included in these phrases are crucial to the sentence,

02:11

we can cross out choice A - existence, C - prairies,

02:15

and D - fighters. We're looking for the subject,

02:17

and we can never remove a subject from a sentence without

02:20

causing the whole darn thing to collapse.

02:22

With those rude interrupting phrases out of the way, it's now clear that

02:25

the noun "ancestors"

02:27

is the subject that goes with the verb "composed."

02:30

This makes choice B the right answer. Like ancestors composed.

02:33

Yeah. It's sort of amazing they had any time for poetry with

02:36

all the fighting and hunting and nomad-ing that they were doing. Yeah.

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