Identify the stylistic and grammatical flaw in the sentence: 'The foreign minister made a speech referring back to past historical precedents from antiquity.'
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. tautological redundancy
- Step 1: The phrase 'past historical precedents' is pleonastic, because precedents are inherently past and historical. Likewise, 'referring back' is redundant since 'referring' already incorporates backward direction; this is tautological redundancy. Answer: tautological redundancy. Why not the others: "dangling participial modifier" involves a modifying phrase lacking a logical subject agent to modify; "faulty comparative structure" compares two non-equivalent entities or omits terms in a comparison; "ambiguous pronoun reference" leaves the antecedent of a pronoun unclear among multiple possible nouns.
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