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Anonymous Posted 15 years ago
Grammar
Subject in a sentence.
This is from the BBC web site (from the article 'Lions breed better if living near joining rivers' by Colin Jackson):
"It is a striking piece of research and reveals just how important specific areas of habitat are for the success of a lion pride in particular but also the lion population in general.
As top predators, it is perhaps not surprising that the areas where lions do best, which drove the evolution of their sociality, are also areas coveted by humans."
And my question is: what is the syntactic function of the prepositional phrase As top predators here? The phrase is dangling somehow, and refers to predators, but I'm not sure about which predators; does it refer to lions or humans? Or, may it be a sort of sloppy wording on the part of the author?
Thank you.
Ps: I'm a non-native.
"It is a striking piece of research and reveals just how important specific areas of habitat are for the success of a lion pride in particular but also the lion population in general.
As top predators, it is perhaps not surprising that the areas where lions do best, which drove the evolution of their sociality, are also areas coveted by humans."
And my question is: what is the syntactic function of the prepositional phrase As top predators here? The phrase is dangling somehow, and refers to predators, but I'm not sure about which predators; does it refer to lions or humans? Or, may it be a sort of sloppy wording on the part of the author?
Thank you.
Ps: I'm a non-native.
Top answer
Yes, I'd call it sloppy wording - I suspect that he meant to refer to humans, but there is no way to be sure. 'As' is a preposition; the prepositional phrase modifies one of them, but which?!
- Yes, I'd call it sloppy wording - I suspect that he meant to refer to humans, but there is no way to be sure.
- 'As' is a preposition; the prepositional phrase modifies one of them, but which?!
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2 Answers
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Yes, I'd call it sloppy wording - I suspect that he meant to refer to humans, but there is no way to be sure. 'As' is a preposition; the prepositional phrase modifies one of them, but which?!
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