WANTED: Grammar Expert

[Nia]

Hi,

I teach English and "Language Arts" and I found the following error:

"Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from 
> and express the injustices African Americans have endured."

This is a very awkward sentence, mainly because of the cumbersome 
antecedent.  The pronoun "her" is incorrect if the antecedent 
is "Toni Morrison's genius."  A pronoun MUST agree with its 
antecedent.  The pronoun "her" refers to a person.  Toni Morrison's 
genius is a thing.  In order to be correct, the sentence must be 
reworded.  Were this a college-level paper, I'd also ask the student 
to qualify the use of the word "genius," since there are a number of 
authors who have been able to effectively depict the injustices 
African Americans have endured.  The word "genius" as used here 
suggests that Ms. Morrison is the only author so enabled.
:-) Nia


--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Cindy C." 
<cindysphinx at c...> wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> I saw this in today's Washington Post, and I thought I'd test you 
> guys.  Please, if you know the answer from reading about this in 
the 
> media, let's keep the answer a secret and let folks who didn't 
read 
> the story have a go.  
> 
> OK.  
> 
> A major standardized test in the U.S. asked students whether there 
> was an error in grammar in the following sentence:
> 
> "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise 
from 
> and express the injustices African Americans have endured."
> 
> Yes, there is an error (although the testing bureau denied that 
> there was an scored "no error" as the correct answer).  A panel of 
> outside experts in grammar was hired to rule, and they identified 
an 
> error in grammar, forcing the testing bureau to re-score the exam.
> 
> What is the error?
> 
> Cindy -- who could not find the error