Identify the error in the sentence: 'Having arrived at the airport two hours early, the passport had been left on the kitchen table.'
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: C. dangling modifier
- Step 1: The introductory participial phrase 'Having arrived at the airport two hours early' has no logical agent to modify in the main clause. Because 'the passport' is the subject of the passive clause, the sentence absurdly implies that the passport arrived at the airport early. Answer: dangling modifier. Why not the others: "faulty parallel structure" violates grammatical symmetry across items in a coordinated series; "subject-verb disagreement" occurs when the subject noun and finite verb fail to match in number; "comma splice error" joins two independent clauses using only a comma without a conjunction.
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