Participial Construction
Successive rock layers yield fossils of increasingly larger horse species, culminating in the horses of today.
I reckon the underlined 'culminating' can be rewritten as 'and they culminate'.
If I'm correct, what does the second underlined 'they' refer to? Should it be 'successive rock layers' or 'increasingly larger horse species'? Or something else?
Thank you so much.
Top answer
The original sentence is faulty in the same way that your proposed revision is. There is nothing on the page that can culminate. Changing it to "and they culminate" only makes the error more obvious, as you yourself perceived.
- The original sentence is faulty in the same way that your proposed revision is.
- There is nothing on the page that can culminate.
- Changing it to "and they culminate" only makes the error more obvious, as you yourself perceived.
- We know what the writer means, but that is nothing but a lucky break for him.
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The original sentence is faulty in the same way that your proposed revision is. There is nothing on the page that can culminate. Changing it to "and they culminate" only makes the error more obvious, as you yourself perceived. We know what the writer means, but that is nothing but a lucky break for him.
0Successive rock layers yield fossils of increasingly larger horse species, culminating in the bones of Equus, or horses of today.
The fossils are changing, as the younger rock layers yield more recent species.
0shcho23Successive rock layers yield fossils of increasingly larger horse species, culminating in the horses of today.
This sentence leaves out a lot of details of the reasoning. You can add back about as much detail as you'd like to paraphrase it.
Successive rock layers yield fossils of increasingly larger horse species, which culminates in the horse
0
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