Modification of Nouns

[Igor]

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.


The chance of lightning striking a building depends on its height.

In this case " chance " has a general meaning. Do you have to illuminate " the"?



Ink blot testing was invented by psychiatrist Herman Rorschach as a tool to ferret out of a person unconscious mind various bits and pieces of information.

Is " a person" a possessor in this sentence? If yes, we have to write " a person's unconscious mind.


Coral Atolls, those ring-shaped islands that surround a lagoon, are made up of the skeletons of numerable marine animals.

If we put here " innumerable", will it be more suitable for the meaning of the sentence.

Thanks.

[Erin]

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.

The chance of lightning striking a building depends on its height.

In this case " chance " has a general meaning. Do you have to illuminate " the"?

"illuminate"? I'm not quite sure of what you mean. But yes, we need to use a determiner because "chance" is a singular count noun.

Ink blot testing was invented by psychiatrist Herman Rorschach as a tool to ferret out of a person's unconscious mind various bits and pieces of information.

Is " a person" a possessor in this sentence? If yes, we have to write " a person's unconscious mind.

This type of question DOES appear on the TOEFL.

DEFINITELY!!

Coral Atolls, those ring-shaped islands that surround a lagoon, are made up of the skeletons of numerable marine animals.

If we put here " innumerable", will it be more suitable for the meaning of the sentence.

Thanks.

Two choices here: "innumerable" or "numerous;" "numerable" and "numberable" mean "able to be numbered."

This type of question does NOT appear on the TOEFL.

I'm not sure what kinds of questions these are; I think I'll move this to the general grammar section.

[Idiot]

Originally posted by TestMagic

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