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Difficulty: EasyAdjectives, Adverbs, and Modifiers

Read the sentence below:

"Walking down the quiet street, the historic library came into view."

Which of the following correctly describes the grammatical flaw in this sentence?

  1. The introductory participial phrase functions as a dangling modifier because it illogically modifies 'the historic library'.Answer
  2. B
    The sentence confuses the homophones 'quiet' and 'quite'.
  3. C
    The phrase contains an unnatural collocation between the modifier 'quiet' and the noun 'street'.
  4. D
    The modifier 'historic' should be replaced by the adverb 'historically' to modify the library.

Answer

The sentence contains a dangling modifier because the introductory modifying phrase 'Walking down the quiet street' illogically attaches to 'the historic library' instead of a person walking.
The introductory participial phrase 'Walking down the quiet street' describes an action performed by a person. Because it precedes the main clause whose subject is 'the historic library', it illogically modifies the library. This syntactical error is known as a dangling modifier.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the introductory modifying phrase and the main subject of the sentence.
The modifier is 'Walking down the quiet street', and the subject of the main clause is 'the historic library'.
Introductory participial phrases must logically describe the subject of the main clause.
2
Evaluate whether the main clause subject can perform the action in the modifying phrase.
A building ('library') cannot perform the action of walking down a street.
Attaching a physical action modifier to an inanimate subject results in a dangling participial modifier.

Key Concept

Dangling modifiers occur when an introductory participial phrase does not logically refer to the grammatical subject of the main clause.
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Topics

Adjectives, Adverbs, and Modifiers

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