Mark,

I agree that it is a bad question. It doesn't test the students'
understanding of the sentence but rather their awareness of which meaning
of "refer to" the questioners have in mind. I assume they want answer A,
but I think B is perfectly reasonable as well.

Take another sentence, "Of all the basketball players I have seen, my
favorites are Jabbar, Jordan, and James." What does the word "favorites"
refer to?

Well, in one sense it could refer to the antecedent "basketball players,"
but it would also make perfect sense to say it refers to "Jabbar, Jordan,
and James." You could certainly imagine the student thinking, "They are the
favorites, so of course it refers to them."  If the question were restated
as "*Who *does the word 'favorites' refer to?," I think most people would
name the three players.

So bad test question.

Different topic: in "the family felidae," "family" is a noun (object of the
preposition). "Felidae," also a noun, is a restrictive appositive. Other
examples: "the color blue," "my sister Evelyn," "the play *Hamlet*."

Compare "family felidae" (main noun + appositive) with "family tree" (noun
modifier + main noun).

Dick


On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 1:04 PM, M C Johnstone <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>  Hello,
>
>  A sentence on this pattern came up as an proposed item for a standardized
> test recently:
>
>  "The lynx belongs to the family felidae and is a mammal. **Others** are
> the wildcat, cougar, and cheetah."
>
>  It is a multiple choice item. The question stem is "What does the word **
> others** in line ## refer to?"
>
>  Two of the choices are:
>
>  A. felidae
>  B. wildcat, cougar, and cheetah
>
>  I'm not sure whether felidae is singular or plural, that depends on
> whether it is nominative or genitive case. I don't think it matters since
> the word functions as an adjective modifying "family" and so must be
> singular in English.
>
>  So, it is difficult to see how the plural pronoun "others" can refer to a
> singular felidae family.  It seems more closely associated with "wildcat,
> cougar and cheetah" though this phrase is the complement of "are" and not a
> pronoun referent.
>
>  According to the item writer, the word "others" refers to "felidae."
>
>  This is part of a reading comprehension test and so raises another
> question: how can identification of the correct pronoun referent can be
> interpreted as evidence of comprehending a text?
>
>  Mark
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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