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Description:

Do you know a prepositional phrase when you see one? Take a look at this AP English Language and Composition question and find out.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by philosophers.

00:07

What did the philosopher say when his mom asked him to take out the trash?

00:11

Why?

00:12

[ gasp ] [ chuckle ]

00:13

We're reading.. We're reading... We're skimming.

00:16

[ mumbles ]

00:22

Okay, here we go. In line 33, "is"

00:25

refers to which of the following words?

00:28

And here are the potential answers.

00:29

[ mumbles ]

00:34

All right, well the trick here is knowing a prepositional phrase when we see one.

00:38

At their most basic level,

00:40

prepositional phrases are made up of a preposition

00:43

and a noun

00:45

which functions as the object of the preposition.

00:48

All right, so for example, if we slap the preposition "of"

00:52

together with the noun "scorpions,"

00:54

we get the prepositional phrase "of scorpions."

00:58

Yeah we like our prepositional phrases to be a little bit dangerous.

01:01

All right, most of the time, prepositional phrases function like

01:04

adjectives or adverbs

01:05

usually describing things like nouns or verbs.

01:09

So in the sentence

01:10

"John fell into a pit of scorpions,"

01:14

"of scorpions" modifies the noun "pit."

01:18

And "into a pit" modifies the verb "fell." Get it?

01:22

Uh, okay, back to the question at hand.

01:25

To which noun is the verb "is" referring?

01:28

Well, since "is"

01:30

is the main verb of the sentence, it'd better be referring to the subject.

01:34

Right? Or else the grammar police are gonna come down hard on all of us.

01:38

Now that we know how to spot prepositional phrases, we can eliminate

01:40

most of these options really quickly.

01:42

Three - count 'em, three - of these choices are the object

01:45

of a preposition, so they can't be the subject of the sentence.

01:49

Bing bing bing.

01:51

Choice B is wrong because "belief" is the

01:53

object of the phrase "on belief."

01:56

A can go because "realisation" is the object of the phrase

02:00

"in an external realisation."

02:02

And E is eliminated because it's the object of the phrase

02:06

"of the good." So these choices are dropping like flies.

02:10

It'll be easier to find out which of these nouns is the subject of the sentence

02:13

if we scrape away all this prepositional phrase business.

02:16

It's a lot of frosting and we're looking for good cake.

02:18

All right, so now we're down to "insistence is a form."

02:22

Well, it's pretty hard to miss that "insistence" is the subject of the sentence,

02:26

since it's the thing that's doing somethin'. What's it doin'?

02:28

Being a form.

02:30

Sounds exhausting.

02:31

The noun "form" is telling us what insistence is doing,

02:35

making it the direct object.

02:37

So it looks like option C is out and D takes home the prize.

02:41

And before we go, we have to go back to option A.

02:43

We let this slide earlier, but

02:45

"realisation" spelled with an S?

02:47

Like, c'mon, England.

02:49

Yeah, you liked jazz.

02:52

[ buzz ]

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