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Plight uprooted
"The plight of Iraqis uprooted by violence is further proof of how broken the country is."
Plight: difficult situation Uprooted: removed How is the difficult situation removed/eradicated/exterminated by violence? Some guidance please?
As Guest says, it isn't the plight that's uprooted, but rather the Iraqis.
"The plight of <Iraqis [who have been] uprooted by violence> is further proof of how broken the country is."
Ok, this is an interesting question. As I have said in other posts I don't claim to be a grammarian so I would appreciate it if someone out there could explain this.
"The plight of Iraqis uprooted by violence is further proof of how broken the country is." So, normally English places the modifier (adjective) before the noun it modifies. But here you could never say: "The plight of *uprooted by violence* Iraqis..." On the other hand you can, and in fact you must say: "The plight of *poverty stricken* Iraqis..." Why must the modifier be placed after the noun in the first case but before the noun in the second case?
If you hyphenated those phrases into poverty-stricken and uprooted-by-violence you could, actually. Hyphenation makes them function as one-word adjectives. otherwise they function as clauses, I believe, hence the change in rules.
RayH: I think it's because "poverty stricken" (with or without a hyphen) acts as a compound adjective. Or you could say that "poverty" is acting as an attributive - a kind of adverbial. It seems that if the adjective is modified by an attributive or an adverb, then it can precede the noun.
But in the first case, the adjectival phrase "uprooted by violence" contains an adjective modified by a prepositional phrase. It seems that for whatever reason, when there's a prepositional phrase, the adjective can't precede the noun. |