Modification

Question

Hi, please help me.

"He said nothing other than a total freeze is acceptable for all of the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, which Israel claims to have absorbed."

Does "for all...have absorbed" modify "a total freeze"?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

No.  'Acceptable'.

Anonymous · Answer

I HAVE CONSIDERED THIS QUESTION FOR 12 HOURS BEFORE SUBMITTING FOR MODERATION

Tashiro,

I most respectfully suggest that a good case could be made for

considering the prepositional phrase as a modifier of "freeze."

I believe that a reordering of your sentence will more clearly

bring this point out.

(For the sake of parsing, let's delete the words "He said.")

Nothing [which is] other than a total freeze = subject.

is = linking verb.

acceptable = subjective complement.

It is only my opinion that the prepositional phrase belongs to

the noun "freeze." I believe that the writer separated it from its

noun because of the phrase's length.

I feel that the preposition "for" collocates well with the noun

"freeze," but I do not feel that the preposition "for" comfortably

collocates with "acceptable" in this particular sentence.

I feel that the basic sentence is:

Nothing is acceptable.

It would not make sense to say:

Nothing is acceptable for all of the occupied territories.

It seems to me that "[which is] other than a total freeze for all

of the occupied territories" is a unit that belongs to "Nothing":

Nothing which is other than a full freeze for all of the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, which Israel claims to have absorbed, is acceptable [to the Palestinians].

Q: What is acceptable [to the Palestinians]?

A: Nothing other than a total freeze for all of the

occupied territories, including ....

I believe that a proposal is said to be acceptable to

a person/persons.

Proofread several times. If this is a definitely wrong answer,

kindly delete, Mr./Ms. Moderator.

Thank you

BillJ · Answer

tashiroHe said nothing other than a total freeze is acceptable for all of the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, which Israel claims to have absorbed."

Does "for all...have absorbed" modify "a total freeze"?

No, it's not a modifier - it's actually a complement to the adjective "acceptable". The sequence in bold is an adjective phrase (as predicative complement) whose head, i.e. main word, is "acceptable", with the underlined prepositional phrase as its complement. We understand that it's for all of the occupied territories ... that the total freeze was said to be acceptable.

BillJ

Modification

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