chiayu wrote:
Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world'd social wasps, wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of females- the queen and her sterile female workers.
A) wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of
B) wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of
C) which means they live in a highly cooperative and organized society, almost all
D) which means that their society is highly cooperative, organized, and it is almost entirely
E) living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, and it consists of almost all
Lets make sentence a bit simple....
red ants number among the 900 or so species of the worlds ants,
ants living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of females- the X and the Y.....
C & D are outright wrong because in " which means" which would refer to ants that cannot mean anything stated later on.
E is wrong because even if "It" may refer to society it is redudant and not parallel...the sentence should have been...
living in a society that is highly cooperative and organized, consisting of almost all...
Now between A&B...
First your query....
An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that immediately follows another noun. An appositive explains or
defines the noun it follows and is set off by commas.
eg: Mexico City,
the biggest city in the world, has many interesting archaeological sites.
Mexico City = the biggest city in the world
Appositives are always set off by commas. Another interesting aspect of appositives is that they can always be exchanged with the nouns they modify as in another example:
The altitude of Lhasa,
the capital of Tibet, is over 12,000 feet.
The altitude of
the capital of Tibet, Lhasa, is over 12,000 feet.
So clearly wasps living in a highly cooperative.....is not an appositive but a modifier clause that modifies worlds social wasps...
Now again coming back to a&b
A has a big problem....it says that they consist of....where only logical referrant to they is wasps. But we know that wasps can not consist of females but a society can....
So clearly the Answer is B...