hi there welcome to eg matt my name is stacey trapanier i'm one of the subject matter experts
here on the egmet team and i'm going to go going to work through this official question on an epic
with you now if you're intimidated by a completely underlying sentence no worries our approach is
going to be exactly the same here as a partially underlying sentence in a lot of ways a completely
underlined sentence gives us more freedom so let's get to work using that eg matte three-step
approach to extract the meaning utilizing the sentence structure as we begin reading we see
remembered almost as an epic so we know that something is remembered and it is remembered
almost as an epic so we keep reading to find out what among americans 12 000 bosnian muslims so
this epic is remembered among this group of 12 000 bosnian muslims is the digging of chicago
subway tunnels so this digging of the subway tunnels seems to be what is remembered among
this group of people in the early 1900s so it seems that this digging is
taking place in the early 1900s and one of the proudest of family legends okay
now if you're like me and you read through this sentence and kind of paused after reading
through it the first time and went huh you're not alone definitely a confusing sentence definitely
comes across as kind of a jumbled mess when you first read through it now not the most
beautifully structured sentence not the easiest to digest as far as meaning goes one of the reasons
might be because we have an inverted structure here what i mean by inverted structure is that
the subject and verb are flipped our traditional sc structure is that we have subject plus verb
plus object and then our modifier is worked in but in an inverted structure we tend to have our verb
then our subject and objects modifiers so here you can see we have our verb is remembered and then
our subject the digging so if we want to try to really work and see what's happening and extract
that meaning we can flip the structure back around and we can put the digging up here the digging
is remembered almost as an epic among america's 12 000 bosnian muslims now
as i read that the thing that's standing out now is the use of this phrase
an epic and the sentence seems to now be communicating that i have rearranged it
that this digging of chicago subway tunnels is remembered as an epic and my question here now is
can digging be an epic and i would have to argue no it cannot the very nature of an epic is that
it is a story coming down from the past and the subject of epics or heroic persons or events that
inspire legend thus the subject of a legend could possibly be the digging of these tunnels but the
act of digging alone is not going to be an epic so the meaning as it's presented is completely
illogical now we also have the use of one of the proudest of family legends sitting down here kind
of at the bottom on its own not really connected to anything else in the sentence and the use of
this word legends down here leaves me wondering okay well maybe it's the act of digging these
tunnels which was quite impressive and this became the subject of a legend and that legend
could have become an epic and so maybe if i piece these clues together i can reorganize
and infer the meaning that's happening here so maybe the legend is what is actually the epic
so the legend equals the epic so that would make sense especially if this impressive act of digging
became the legend so kind of that ripple effect so let's start to kind of piece this together
we could say that one of the proudest family legends is digging of chicago subway tunnels in
the early 1900s so this could be our first entity right here number one that one of the proudest of
family legends and this protest of family legends is the digging of the subway tunnels and that this
family legend is remembered as almost epic so this could equal number two right here
and then that third piece could be that this epic is remembered among america's 12 000 bosnian
muslims so this could be number three okay so that all makes logical sense as far as
the sentence being communicated in a manner that gives us that meaning of an epic and everything's
being properly communicated and making sense that the legend would be the digging and the legend
then becomes an epic that's remembered so let's organize this in our key aspects that something
is remembered by america's bosnian muslims as an epic and one of the proudest family legends
is almost an epic and that this family legend is the digging of chicago's subway tunnel so
you kind of see that trickle-down effect so let's move into that air analysis now that we have that
meaning analysis and we know we definitely are dealing with a communication based sentence and
now that we've extracted those logical aspects the error analysis and using those tools of grammar
grammatically speaking nothing's really wrong here i mean we we don't have the meaning we need
so we definitely have to find an answer choice that communicates that logical intended meaning
but grammatically speaking this modifier that's sitting down in here one of the proudest of family
legends is not associated really with a particular piece of the sentence it's just kind of sitting
on its own down here it's kind of like the outlier of the sentence it's not really
connected to anything and we know as we said in that meaning analysis that we need this proudest
of family legends to be connected to this entity of the epic up here because it's this legend that
is the epic so we need to find a structure that connects this modifier into the context of the
sentence to give us that meaning that we're looking for and this is where the beauty of a
completely underlined sentence comes in because we can completely rearrange everything to really make
our sentences inclusive of this modifier that has kind of been left out of this structure altogether
so let's get to work and see if we can find an answer choice that does what we need it to do
both from the meaning perspective and from the structural perspective so choice a is out
for that illogical meaning we discussed and for that modifier that was kind of left out of the
structure altogether choice b again we see repeats the same error
in meaning as option a and communicates at the digging is remembered as an epic almost
an epic among americans 12 000 bosnian flames is the digging so here again almost an epic and
is the digging so choice b is out repeating that same error is a let's take a look at choice c
now choice c we definitely have a change in structure and any time we see such a big
change in structure we're going to make sure our meaning that's being communicated is proper and
we definitely don't have proper meaning here look at this opening modifier digging chicago
subway tunnels in the early 1900s america's 12 000 bosnian muslims now we know this opening
modifier is going to associate with the subject but these american bosnian muslims are in the
present and this digging of the tunnel is in the past so that modifier is not logically modifying
the present bosnian muslims so we definitely have this illogical meaning and a modifier error there
with choice c now choice d which is our most popular incorrect answer choice but if we look
closely at this option it again is associating the digging with an epic as an epic the digging
so this is repeating the same illogical meaning as we had in options a and options b so option
d is out for that reason as well now option e changes our structure but it's getting the job
done it is making one of the proudest of family legends our subject here which works just fine
it's telling us that this legend is what is remembered so this modifier is directly
describing this legend telling us the legend is remembered almost as an epic so it's giving us
that association that we were looking for and it's telling us that this legend is and then it tells
us what this legend is the digging of the subway tunnels so we have the proper meaning we have
the proper structure that's clearly communicating this meaning so choice e gets the job done for us
and we can move on to these takeaways please always remember to spend that time up front
to understand what the sentence intends to communicate especially when you read
a sentence and it just leaves you going hmm you really have to work to infer that meaning so you
know what's going on as you move into those answer choices do not let an inverted structure confuse
you simply identify your subject for pairs and reorganize if necessary so you can extract that
meaning and work through what the author intends to communicate and make sure all your modifiers
are placed so they describe the proper entity and communicate the logical intended meaning we don't
want any modifiers left out just kind of hanging off to the side by themselves we want
all parts of the sentence included thank you so much for stopping by and solving this question
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