15. Which sentence has a dangling modifier?

A) Swimming alongside his friends, Ron felt safe.

B) After much practice, the man was ready to swim the English Channel.

C) While walking along the beach, a huge wave almost swept me away.

D) Though I swam as fast as I could, I did not win the race.

Respuesta :

Answer:   The correct answer is:   [C]:

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 " While walking along the beach, a huge wave almost swept me away. "  

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 Note: Technically speaking, we don't know "who or what" was "walking across the beach" — "the huge wave" ?  or "the person speaking"? .

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Answer:

C) While walking along the beach, a huge wave almost swept me away.

Explanation:

Dangling means loosen, so a dangling modifier means that the structure has been wrongly placed in the sentence for the item the modifier should be affecting is not present or confusing in the sentence.

While walking along the beach is a dangling modifier. Theoreticaly, an adverbial of time modifies the idea expressed in the main clause. The idea from the main clause is that a huge wave almost swept the speaker away. If we ask the speaker : "When did a huge wave sweep you?", he / she will answer : "While my walking along the beach." He / She  will tell who was walking along the beach. In the adverbial phrase the ing requires an objective pronoun or a possessive determiner as a subject.  If the subject is not explicit in an a pattern such as while walking...., a huge wave..., the subject of the modifier should be the same as the subject from the main clause; in this case it would be senseless to say that it was the huge wave that was walking along the beach. Then, the correct modifier would be: While me / my walking along the beach,a huge wave almost swept me away