0
Stenka25 Posted 11 years ago
Vocabulary
Pronoun problems
pronoun problems
The passage below is from ‘the Blank Slate’ by Steven Pinker.
http://evolbiol.ru/blankslate/blankslate.htm
But it is the doctrine of the Noble Savage that has been most mercilessly debunked by the new evolutionary thinking. A thoroughly noble anything is an unlikely product of natural selection, because in the competition among genes for representation in the next generation, noble guys tend to finish last. Conflicts of interest are ubiquitous among living things, since two animals cannot both eat the same fish or monopolize the same mate. To the extent that social motives are adaptations ?that maximize copies of the genes ?that produced ?them, ?they should be designed to prevail in such conflicts, and one way to prevail is to neutralize the competition.
In this passage I want to ask whether my guessings are correct or not.
Can you check these out for me?
?that : adaptations
?that : copies (of the genes)
?them : social motives
?they : social motives
In #2, I think it refers to ‘copies,’ but in a noun phrase modified by ‘of + noun’ phrase, it’s hard to decide which is the antecedent of the relative pronoun between ‘before of’ and ‘after of.’
The most trickiest part is 3 & 4, it seems to represent ‘social motives’ in a way but it also seems to refer to ‘adaptations.’
Hope for your replies.
Regards.
The passage below is from ‘the Blank Slate’ by Steven Pinker.
http://evolbiol.ru/blankslate/blankslate.htm
But it is the doctrine of the Noble Savage that has been most mercilessly debunked by the new evolutionary thinking. A thoroughly noble anything is an unlikely product of natural selection, because in the competition among genes for representation in the next generation, noble guys tend to finish last. Conflicts of interest are ubiquitous among living things, since two animals cannot both eat the same fish or monopolize the same mate. To the extent that social motives are adaptations ?that maximize copies of the genes ?that produced ?them, ?they should be designed to prevail in such conflicts, and one way to prevail is to neutralize the competition.
In this passage I want to ask whether my guessings are correct or not.
Can you check these out for me?
?that : adaptations
?that : copies (of the genes)
?them : social motives
?they : social motives
In #2, I think it refers to ‘copies,’ but in a noun phrase modified by ‘of + noun’ phrase, it’s hard to decide which is the antecedent of the relative pronoun between ‘before of’ and ‘after of.’
The most trickiest part is 3 & 4, it seems to represent ‘social motives’ in a way but it also seems to refer to ‘adaptations.’
Hope for your replies.
Regards.
Top answer
1 adaptations 2 genes 3 adaptations/social motives 4 social motives/adaptations I have listed the more logical (to me) first. Since grammatically 'social motives = adaptations' in this text, there is no way of grammatically identifying the referents of 3 and 4.
- 1 adaptations 2 genes 3 adaptations/social motives 4 social motives/adaptations I have listed the more logical (to me) first.
- Since grammatically 'social motives = adaptations' in this text, there is no way of grammatically identifying the referents of 3 and 4.
Get the Weekly English Kit 📬
New words, one handy idiom, and a 2-minute quiz — delivered to your inbox to keep your streak alive.
2 Answers
0
1 adaptations
2 genes
3 adaptations/social motives
4 social motives/adaptations
I have listed the more logical (to me) first. Since grammatically 'social motives = adaptations' in this text, there is no way of grammatically identifying the referents of 3 and 4.
2 genes
3 adaptations/social motives
4 social motives/adaptations
I have listed the more logical (to me) first. Since grammatically 'social motives = adaptations' in this text, there is no way of grammatically identifying the referents of 3 and 4.
00
Related Questions