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I will admit that I missed this one. I read the sentence in question three or four times without catching the problem. THIS is where parsing a sentence is invaluable!
Grammar Glitch Pushes PSAT to Rethink, Rescore
By Linda Perlstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 14, 2003; Page A01
"Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured." Is there something grammatically wrong with this sentence?
Educational Testing Service, which administers the PSAT for the College Board, said there wasn't. Kevin Keegan, a Montgomery County high school journalism teacher, said there was.
After three months of back-and-forth letter writing, complete with dueling references to English usage books, the testing firm sent the question, from the writing portion of the Oct. 15 exam, to an outside panel of experts. Keegan's point was valid, the grammarians said, forcing ETS to throw out the question and bump up the test scores of nearly 500,000 students, of the 1.8 million who took the test that day.
Each year the PSAT, through which high school juniors qualify to become National Merit commended students or semifinalists, generates 50 or so inquiries about test answers, but this is the first time in two decades that a challenge has succeeded, testing officials said.
On Question 10, students were asked to identify whether there was a grammatical error in the sentence, or none at all. The correct answer, as scored by ETS, was "E," for no error. Keegan, who teaches at James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring and coordinates Montgomery County's Quizmaster Challenge cable show, disagreed.
The word "her," he posited, was improperly referring to "Toni Morrison's," so the answer should have been "A," signifying a mistake in "her to create." Many grammar manuals insist that a pronoun such as "her" should refer only to a noun, not, as in the case of the possessive "Toni Morrison's," an adjective.
Before it wound up on the test, the question was reviewed by as many as 30 experts. Both then and after, "the staff felt there was one correct answer," said Lee Jones, a College Board vice president. Keegan agreed that there was one answer: the other one.
Keegan, 49, noticed the question while going over the returned test of a student. "I was taught that rule a long time ago -- 30 years ago -- and I have actually enforced it on people's essays," he said.
He submitted a complaint, and ETS responded in a letter that there is disagreement on that rule's validity. "The reader knows full well that her can only refer to Toni Morrison," an assessment specialist wrote.
That's not the point, Keegan wrote in response. The exam isn't testing whether sentences are clear but whether they are correct. Besides, he said later, "if you have a rule that in two grammar books contradicts itself, you either don't test it or you accept both answers."
In its next response, ETS said that 53 percent of test-takers, including the "most able," chose "no error" as their answer.
That's not the point either, Keegan wrote back.
After ETS conceded, the College Board this month sent a letter nationwide explaining that the question would be thrown out and the test rescored. PSAT questions all previously appeared on SAT tests, but the College Board is not going that far back to change scores. "It was so long ago that it seems that it would be kind of moot to do that," Jones said.
Keegan's success has given him some satisfaction -- oh, wait.
Keegan's success has given the teacher some satisfaction that students kept from National Merit status only because of their "A" answer may now make the cut.
However, he said of ETS administrators, "I'm still not happy with them."
ETS rescored the test without Question 10 and kept the higher of the two scores for each test-taker. The scores that increased did so by about one or two points, out of a possible 80. Because of the way the test was rescored, though, students who originally chose "E" had a slight point advantage; those who chose "A" wound up no better off than those who answered "B," "C" or "D" or skipped the question. Keegan finds this unjust.
Jones called it "the best and fairest solution we can come up with." Though, he added, "the best thing to do would be not to have had the question on the test."
TEd
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>THIS is where parsing a sentence is invaluable!
this is a case where parsing a sentence is valuable for determining if you've properly followed some obscure rule. it is NOT a case where parsing will help you write functional English.
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I'm a strong advocate of standardized tests. Still, I think it's inevitable that questions like this arise on tests, though, and I'm glad the teacher disputed it.
The problems that bother me most are not problems like this, because I suspect that the test-makers weren't even aware of any disagreement among the authorities. The ones that bother me are the ones that 1) require too much detailed and unnecessary knowledge - like memorization of the formula for the surface area of a cone or 2) Have multiple answers that I perceive are equally bad.
Another example of number 1) was a history question on the Virginia Standards of Learning Test (SOL) that asked students when tobacco was introduced to Virginia and the answers were four choices each spaced only 2 years before the last. Clearly that is a stupid question, imo. I can't think of a specific example of number 2) ... only a general reference ... on the SAT they used to have these questions where you would read a short essay or fragment and then select "the best title" when in my view the best answer was really E) none of the above as they are all equally stupid.
Oh, another class of problems - those that are just outright wrong (again, one would expect a few of these occasionally). One from (I think) SAT from maybe two decades ago was Take two quarters, lay one flat on the table and keep it still. Now Place the second quarter adjacent to the first so they are touching and roll the second quarter around the first (WITHOUT SLIPPAGE). When the second quarter has gotten back to where it started, how many times will George have rotated? The testing service had one answer, and a boy somewhere pointed out to them that the answer which they thought was obvious was wrong. (Try it yourself. It'll slip a bit, but you should get the general idea pretty easily.)
It's unlikely in the extreme that these kinds of questions will seriously effect the scores of most test-takers. (They affected me because I seldom skipped - which is a very bad strategy - though I still do quite well on the tests.) However, they could easily affect the National Merit outcomes. Also, they could affect the people who are borderline in some schools - but the standards are almost always so low anyway, and schools almost always use other criteria. It seems doubtful this would be the make-or-break.
k
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old hand
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Hi,
I found this a most incredible story. From a scientific standpoint, the way to avoid such a blunder would be to stop asking the same questions to all 1.8 million candidates. The consequences of the intrinsic fuzziness of language could thus be statistically attenuated. Either the number of re-scored tests would be reduced, or nobody would insist on it, since it would concern fewer people.
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¿¡Hwæt!? What is this silly grammar rule that is supposedly being violated? It certainly couldn't be anything saying the case of the pronoun must match the case of the referent irrespective of the pronoun's function in the sentence. That would be just plain stupid.
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it seems to be claiming that "her" doesn't have a proper referent!
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"her" doesn't have a proper referent
What does it take to be a proper referent? Do you need certification by the Montgomery County Board of Pronouns and Referents?
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yes, would the rule have us recast this as: "Toni Morrison's genius enables Tony Morrison to create novels that arise from and express..."
(actually, one could, I suppose, write: "Her genius enables Tony Morrison to create...")
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Bah, humbug. The sentence is fine, rule aside, parsing aside. The sentence is isolated, out of context, but with any degree of thought at all it is clear that the referent is "Toni Morrison." I would disagree with the rule that the referent needs to appear in each sentence. We would assume here that Toni Morrison had been named in an earlier sentence, but, even if she had not been named, even if this were the opening sentence in an essay, the meaning remains clear.
Grammar should serve the clear expression of thought and not the other way around. Again, bah, humbug.
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Toni Morrison has been named in *this sentence. If it were "I gave Toni Morrison her book back," would there be a problem?
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Just for fun I ran "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels" through the grammar check on this computer, and the computer found no fault, not that I give much credit to computer grammar checks.
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Beyond finding accidentally repeated words and instances of the dreaded passive mood, computer grammar checkers aren't worth a whole lot
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In normal circumstance, whether one refers to casual conversation or to formal communication, I think you are 100% on target. However, in this particular case, it was a question about knowledge of the rules. Any student reading that might realize that the statement's intent was clear and unambiguous, but many students (and I confess I do this ALL the time when I took those kinds of tests) would view this as a test of detailed understanding embodied in a trick question. I don't agree with the grammar rule, but that doesn't make it any less of a rule. MANY, MANY times I would look at these kinds of questions and wonder not what the real answer was, but I'd try to second guess - "Okay, given that these jackasses who made this test are lightweights, what is the chance that they're trying to be clever by invoking some arcane rule?"
I think this was a bad - a very bad - question. It would not be a bad question at all if the rules were less ambiguous. Look at the rule that says that proper sentences do not end with a preposition. For years, expert communicators have said this is not a good rule, but it seems to me it's been only recently that the wider community of "those who officiate what can be said and how" have agreed with that assessment. (That is, if I were taking a test in the intervening years, and read a sentence that ended with a preposition, EVEN IF THE SENTENCE WERE PERFECTLY CLEAR, NATURAL, AND UNAMBIGUOUS, I would have probably said, "Okay, even though this is "really" a perfectly good sentence, I'm pretty sure I know the answer they want, so I'll put that down."
A good test maker these days would not have question of this sort on a test - because you're going to have a lot of students being taught that it's okay, and a lot who are also going to be taught that it's wrong (because they have older, stubborn teachers who might only know the old way) AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY you're going to have some really savvy students who are aware of both sides of the issue and are going to wonder, "Well, it could go either way depending on who's in charge of grading this blasted thing."
I'm not saying that making tests is trivial, but they complicate it horrendously by trying to be tricky (though in this case, I don't think they were being tricky - probably just unaware - as was I - of the different views).
Related thing: there was some girl somewhere who refused to take a state SOL because she said it was stupid and easy, but in my view that's exactly what those tests should be. They should NOT (*) be college placement tests - they should be tests to ensure that students have learned the absolute minimal knowledge necessary to function succesfully. The tests ought to be simple to take for anyone who can read, write, and has payed attention to the teacher for 1 day out of 5.
k
(*) normally i don't document my edits, but that error subverted my intent.
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Yeah. What is the rule, precisely stated? And remember: rules have exceptions.
It would be interesting to read the directions for this section of the test.
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I am more bothered by the syllepsis of …novels that arise from and express the injustices… where injustices is alternately the object of the preposition from and the verb express.
Unless you want to argue that arise from is a phrasal verb.
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Re:"I gave Toni Morrison her book back,"
the rule says pronouns refer back to nouns, not possive nouns that are considered adjectives.. so in the above sentence, her is refering to the closest noun (Toni Morrison) so it should be alright.
but "Toni Morrison's book was returned to her, today, by me." would not be correct, since her would be once again refering to the possive noun, Toni Morrison's which is really an adjective, since Book is the subject.
now one could argue that Toni Morrison's book is a subject phrase.. but still the subject is book and book can't be replaced by her! take out Toni Morrison's and replace it with a The
The book was returned to her, today, by me." and you have no idea who the her refers to.
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So they've pulled out the possesive case for some special reason, what? Johnny Chambers's wife ran off with a possesive man, leaving him to raise the kids all by his lonesome?
It's not an adjective; it's a noun. How many legs would a horse have if you called the tail a leg?
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Toni Morrison's is a possessive noun that is functioning as an adjective in the sentence. Big deal that the possessive noun--and a proper one at that--is functioning as an adjective! Its nominativeness is so clearly evident as the referent for her that the sentence should be considered to be both grammatical and correct.
I agree that the sentence should not have been included on the test, but I remain adamant that the sentence is correct--a pox on the rule!
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Anybody interested in discussing the syllepsis?
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Syllepsis ... is that a venerable disease?
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Faldage! You found it! I'd been looking for the rhetorical figure that Harper Lee had used when referring to Atticus's practicing mostly economy after the passage about his first years of practicing law. It's not precisely syllepsis, but it's bound to be one of the subsets on the page you provided here.
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Are they (whoever they may be) seriously suggesting that a pronoun can never refer back to a noun in the possessive case? When is a possessive noun not an adjective, or presumably a possessive pronoun, under their definition?
Would they allowTony Morrison's enables her to ...?
Bingley
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Bingley,
It would be good to see the rule spelled out from several grammar texts. And then we could argue with the rule as stated. As I wrote above, there are exceptions to rules and this may well be a case where an exception is the case. Technically, if I'm reading this whole thread correctly, by virtue of the fact that Toni Morrison's functions as an adjective modifying the noun and subject genius, there is a strict problem regarding the use of her in this sentence. But many of us here disagree with the problem.
I've been running this rule over and over in my head--and keep banging up against a wall of common sense. If the placement and function of the referent is so important, then what about sentences on an imaginary SAT such as:
1. Her decision to leave school left her hopeless.
Well, is this sentence incorrect or not? We don't even have the embedded name here functioning as an adjective.
2. Chalkley told her to consider a new career.
In the above sentence, we don't have a referent at all. We must assume that this sentence has been culled out of an ongoing narrative. Is the sentence ungrammatical? No.
And then there's your sentence, Bingley, which certainly meets the stipulations of this dastardly rule that we still need to see spelled out in all its ramifications. But I know you know that your sentence, though showing Toni Morrison's functioning as the subject, is less satisfying than the original with Toni Morrison's genius.
The situation is an aggravating one because we know that the original sentence is grammatically correct and that this so-called rule is where the problem lies. The rule--if we ever get to see it spelled out--will probably turn out to be incomplete and not adequately allowing for the flexibility and actual use of the language.
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Dub-dub, your examples 1 and 2 wouldn't be on the SAT (I'm assuming it follows the format of similar problems on GMAT, which I've taught students for in the past (I found doing the practice tests supplied by ETS for GMAT and GRE quite fun)). The sentences in GMAT are designed to be stand-alone sentences rather than sentences taken from a text which may refer grammatically to the rest of the text. In other words pronoun reference to anything outside the sentence you're given is not allowed. So if there's no antecedent in the sentence, the sentence is wrong.
From Bryan A. Garner's "A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage" (page 62 under the heading Antecedents, False):
C. With Possessives A noun in the possessive case is not a suitable antecedent for a pronoun because the possessive makes the noun functionally an adjective. The parts of speech of an antecedent and its referent must match. "Indeed, the Court's reading of the plain language of the Fourth Amendment is incapable of explaining even its own holding in this case." What is the subject of is, the antecedent of its? The intended antecedent is court, but the possessive court's is merely an adjective modifying reading, and is incapable of acting as the antecedent of it, or as the subject of it. [Read Indeed, the Court in its reading ....]/"There may have been inimical voices raised among the jury, such as the foreman's, who [read such as that of the foreman, who]had just had an unpleasant brush with the bailiff." See APPOSITIVE (A), DEICTIC TERMS, POSSESSIVES (H) & it.
Bingley
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In reply to:
"Indeed, the Court's reading of the plain language of the Fourth Amendment is incapable of explaining even its own holding in this case."
...and, Bingley, this sentence is quite different from the one we've been examining in that the antecedent for its is unclear. Generally antecedents should appear in proximity to the pronoun. In the sentence you cite above, its is closest in position to Fourth Amendment, and that fact automatically makes the sentence incorrect because we can figure out that its actually refers to the Court--even without considering the rule you've provided.
However, in the sentence we've been examining it is clear that Toni Morrison is the referent for her. There is no problem with the position of her. But thanks for providing a clear citation of the rule. I think there is a problem with a categorical application of this particular rule.
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Mr. Garner's citation, not mine.
Bingley
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Mr. Garner's citation
Well you tell Mr. Garner it's the name of a person, place, or thing so it's a noun. It can function as a fried green tomato, it's still a noun. And if he doesn't like it he can fail to understand the sentence for all I care.
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In reply to:
Mr. Garner's citation, not mine.
Well, then, yours of his...
[Ain't pronouns fun?]
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"Her genius enables Toni Morrison to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured"?
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Serving up, one finely chopped tsuwm, simmered in a lightly spiced grammatical goulash, kept on a low boil for over a month. Mmmmmm....slurrrrrrp
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chopped tsuwm
Oops.
So that's where I got the idea from.
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