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Old 02-06-2004, 01:09 AM   #3 (permalink)
Idiot
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Vietnam
Posts: 281
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Quote:
Originally posted by TestMagic

Quote:
Hello everybody!

I have several sentences I'm confused with.


Rattlesnakes feed only on warm-blood animals; the eastern diamond-back, for instance, feeds almost exclusively on cottontail rabbits.

I'd say we needed to put noun " snake" after " diamond-back" because " diamond-back" looks like a modifier of a noun.
This grammar point IS important for the TOEFL.

Correct as written, but you're right about the "snake" being omitted. We often omit the noun that is modified by the adjectives and let the adjectives do the work of a noun.

For example, I can call my Siamese cat just a Siamese, as in "I used to have just one Siamese, but now I have two." I think this type of speech is more common among people who share this type of knowledge, i.e., it is a type of jargon.
Can you tell me when we can omit a noun that is modified by adjectives

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