Discrepancies in understanding

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Many of the instruments used in early operations of the United States Army Signal Corps were adaptations of equipment used by the Plains Indians, particularly that of the heliograph

This is a SAT Sentence Improvement question with highlighted part for possible improvement. The answer provided is

Quote:

Corps, and in particular the heliograph, were adaptions of equipment used by the Plains Indians

Yet I disagree. According to my feeling of word order, the "legitimate" answer distorts the original information by designating the ownership of "heliograph" to United States Army Signal Corps, rather than Plains Indians. I also believe that, "that" in the original sentence is a pronoun modifying "adaptation". (Is the word modify used correctly here?)

Quote:

I was learning about art and life through the abstraction of athletics in much the same way that a soldier's, to an extent, prepared for war by endless parade ground drill.

What's the function of the phrase "to an extent"?
A. It qualifies a statement
B. It minimizes a liability
Correct choice: A
Question: Why not B?

Quote:

Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium but refused to patent the process they had used or otherwise to profit from the commercial exploitation of radium

If, as I understand, the sentece is of a parallel structure, with what is "to profit" connected in the first half? "refused"? Does "or otherwise refused to profit" make sense?

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Re: Discrepancies in understanding

J-B wrote:

According to my feeling of word order, the "legitimate" answer distorts the original information by designating the ownership of "heliograph" to United States Army Signal Corps, rather than Plains Indians. I also believe that, "that" in the original sentence is a pronoun modifying "adaptation".

Hmm. If you're right that the pronoun "that" refers to "adaptation," then to my ear the SAT's suggested answer is correct. As you're pointing out, the function of "that" is to show that the heliograph is one example of an adaptation. Thus the SAT's suggested answer isn't designating ownership of the heliograph to the Army, it's designating ownership of the adaptation of the heliograph to the Army. The Indians do not own the adaptation, after all; they own the real thing on which the adaptation is based.

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Re: Discrepancies in understanding

J-B wrote:

Quote:
Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium but refused to patent the process they had used or otherwise to profit from the commercial exploitation of radium

If, as I understand, the sentece is of a parallel structure, with what is "to profit" connected in the first half?

Yes, the sentence is of parallel structure: "to profit" is paralleling "to patent," which (as you noted) are both connected to "refused." The sentence is saying that the Curies refused to patent their process for discovering radium, and they also refused to profit from the commerical exploitation of radium. Since two infinitives are being refused, the sentence has condensed the structure by paralleling the infinitive verbs.

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Re: Discrepancies in understanding

Shapeless wrote:

J-B wrote:
According to my feeling of word order, the "legitimate" answer distorts the original information by designating the ownership of "heliograph" to United States Army Signal Corps, rather than Plains Indians. I also believe that, "that" in the original sentence is a pronoun modifying "adaptation".

Hmm. If you're right that the pronoun "that" refers to "adaptation," then to my ear the SAT's suggested answer is correct. As you're pointing out, the function of "that" is to show that the heliograph is one example of an adaptation. Thus the SAT's suggested answer isn't designating ownership of the heliograph to the Army, it's designating ownership of the adaptation of the heliograph to the Army. The Indians do not own the adaptation, after all; they own the real thing on which the adaptation is based.

Yet, shouldn't "adaptation of the heliograph" be at a parallel structure with "adaptations of equipment used by Plains Indians?". And isn't it true that in the latter the word "adaptation" show that equipment is adapted into new forms, rather than that the equipment itself "is one example of adaptation"?

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Re: Discrepancies in understanding

Shapeless wrote:

J-B wrote:
Quote:
Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium but refused to patent the process they had used or otherwise to profit from the commercial exploitation of radium

If, as I understand, the sentece is of a parallel structure, with what is "to profit" connected in the first half?

Yes, the sentence is of parallel structure: "to profit" is paralleling "to patent," which (as you noted) are both connected to "refused." The sentence is saying that the Curies refused to patent their process for discovering radium, and they also refused to profit from the commerical exploitation of radium. Since two infinitives are being refused, the sentence has condensed the structure by paralleling the infinitive verbs.

I think my difficulty with understanding is at the meaning of "or otherwise"
I have found that not only can it show a second thing is the opposite of the first thing, but also, it can show that the second is simply different from the first. Then that makes sense.

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Then what is the function of the phrase "to an extent"?
Is it used to "qualify a statement" or to "minimize a liability" or both?

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Re: Discrepancies in understanding

J-B wrote:

Yet, shouldn't "adaptation of the heliograph" be at a parallel structure with "adaptations of equipment used by Plains Indians?"

I think I understand what you're asking, but I might not. The phrase "adaptation of the heliograph" doesn't appear in either the original sentence or the "improved" version, so I'm not sure which parallel structure you're inquiring about. However, you are correct that there is a parallel correlation going on in the original sentence:

Many of the instruments used in early operations of the United States Army Signal Corps were adaptations of equipment used by the Plains Indians, particularly that of the heliograph.

The sentence has two cases of a _______ of _______ construction:
1. "adaptations of equipment used by the Plains Indians"
2. "that of the heliograph"

Thus:

"that" : "adaptations" :: "the heliograph" : "equipment used by the Plains Indians"

The first term in [2] maps onto the first term in [1], while the second term in [2] maps onto the second term in [1]. The heliograph is one example of and is therefore associated with equipment used by the Plains Indians, while its adaptation was done by and is therefore associated with the U.S. Army Corps. This is just another way of reiterating my point that the "ownership" of the adaptation properly goes to the U.S. Army Corps and not the Plains Indians.

But again, I may have misunderstood your question completely... if so, feel free to say so and ask again.

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Re: Discrepancies in understanding

J-B wrote:

I have found that not only can it show a second thing is the opposite of the first thing, but also, it can show that the second is simply different from the first.

Correct. That is exactly the sense in which "otherwise" is being used in this particular sentence.

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J-B wrote:

Then what is the function of the phrase "to an extent"?
Is it used to "qualify a statement" or to "minimize a liability" or both?

To be honest, the original sentence you quoted seems askew to me:

I was learning about art and life through the abstraction of athletics in much the same way that a soldier's, to an extent, prepared for war by endless parade ground drill.

I'm not sure why the word "soldier" is being made possessive if it isn't followed by a noun or noun phrase. Are you sure you transcribed the sentence correctly? If you take away the possessive, the sentence makes a little more sense. In any event, "to an extent" does indeed function to "qualify a statement" in this sentence. Specifically, it is qualifying "in much the same way." The speaker of the sentence is comparing two things:

1. his learning about life and art by abstracting athletics
2. a soldier's preparing for war by participating in endless parade ground drills

The speaker is saying that abstracting athletics has almost the same power to teach him about life and art as parade ground drills have to prepare a soldier for war. However, the speaker apparently does not want to exaggerate the comparison, so he or she has inserted "to an extent" to indicate that the soldier's learning process is not exactly like his or her own. The speaker is qualifying the assertion that the two ideas work in "much the same way."

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Quote:

This is just another way of reiterating my point that the "ownership" of the adaptation properly goes to the U.S. Army Corps and not the Plains Indians.

I totally agree with your point. Yet, in the SAT answer,

Quote:

Many of the instruments used in early operations of the United States Army Signal Corps, and in particular the heliograph, were adaptions of equipment used by the Plains Indians

it shows the meaning that the ownership of the "heliograph", not "the adaptation of the heliograph" goes to the US Army Corps.

Quote:

I'm not sure why the word "soldier" is being made possessive if it isn't followed by a noun or noun phrase. Are you sure you transcribed the sentence correctly?

Can it be understood in the way that "soldier's" is actually a subtraction of "soldier is"?

And, in my opinion, the phrase "minimize a liability" is also true for we can see that the author uses the phrase to "avoid being accused of exaggeration", thus, to "minimize a liability".

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J-B wrote:

Yet, in the SAT answer,

Quote:
Many of the instruments used in early operations of the United States Army Signal Corps, and in particular the heliograph, were adaptions of equipment used by the Plains Indians

it shows the meaning that the ownership of the "heliograph", not "the adaptation of the heliograph" goes to the US Army Corps.

I see what you're saying. It may be that the SAT is intending the term "heliograph" to be used generically--that is, rather than thinking of the heliograph as the Plains Indians' and the adaptation as the U.S. Army Corps's (or vice versa), we should be thinking of "heliograph" as the generic term for which the U.S. Army Corps version and the Plains Indians' version are just two instances. Thus, the sentence above is really just saying that there's a device called a heliograph, and both the U.S. Army Corps and the Plains Indians have versions of it. When you get right down to it, the sentence is stating a plain truth: the heliograph is indisputably an instrument used in early operations of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and was adapted from similar equipment used by the Plains Indians. There really isn't a question of ownership to distort because both parties own some version of a heliograph.

J-B wrote:

And, in my opinion, the phrase "minimize a liability" is also true for we can see that the author uses the phrase to "avoid being accused of exaggeration", thus, to "minimize a liability".

I suppose this is true to the extent that the author's attempted analogy can be considered a "liability," but I really don't know what it means to call an analogy a liability. I can understand what it means to call an analogy a statement, since that's what an analogy is--an assertion that something is similar to something else--so that's why (A) makes sense to me. Perhaps "liability" has a specific meaning in a grammatical context that I'm not aware of?

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Quote:

Thus, the sentence above is really just saying that there's a device called a heliograph, and both the U.S. Army Corps and the Plains Indians have versions of it.

O.K. I admit it is a smart idea. And it gradually gains some sense in this way.

Quote:

but I really don't know what it means to call an analogy a liability.

But I don't mean to call an "analogy" a "liability". What I mean is, if the author omitted the phrase "to an extent", he would bring himself some "liability".( liability, according to my Collins Dictionary, means "something that causes a lot of problems or embarrassment")

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