Grammar question

Test Preparation
1

<p>I]The meeting shed light on the real personality of Jack who had asserted that…</p>

<p>—>I personally think it is ambiguous. I mean, can we consider the case in which “the real personality” had asserted something. (Of course it’s nonsensical; it’s just an example)</p>

<p>II]the meeting shed light on Jack’s real personality who had asserted that…</p>

<p>—> I’m uncertain of this case. Does the “who” automatically refer to Jack? or it is ambiguous. I’m not still acquainted with this kind of syntax. Therefore it would be nice if someone could paste a link or something like that directly related to these cases. I browsed google and I didn’t find anything relevant.
Thank you in advance and don’t hesitate to tell if I made mistakes</p>

<p>PS: Can someone give me an Idioms list (not these with verbs, I already know them), I failed a lot of question because I didn’t know them ex:“as a means” (“not as a mean”)</p>

2

<p>The first sentence requires nothing more than a comma before the who. The who phrase definitely refers to Jack but it needs a comma because it is a non-restrictive rather than a restrictive who phrase (meaning the who phrase is added to provide additional information and not to restrict the meaning of what becomes before the who; an example of a restrictive meaning would be adding the who phrase to designate which Jack you are talking about if there are two Jacks). The second sentence using “Jack’s” is wrong because “who” cannot be used to refer back to a possessive form of a noun, which the sentence is trying to do.</p>

<p>The following lists a number of idioms but I cannot say it has all (note you need to click on each letter in the alphabet box upper left to continue to another page): <a href=“http://www.learnenglishfeelgood.com/americanidioms/index.html[/url]”>http://www.learnenglishfeelgood.com/americanidioms/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Just note the phrase you mention “as a means” is not an idiom. The word “means” is defined to mean a method of bringing about a result and is not actually a plural of the word mean which has an unrelated definition.</p>

3

<p>I]The meeting shed light on the real personality of Jack who had asserted that…</p>

<p>this phrase is correct, the “who” refers to Jack (who was doing the asserting)</p>

<p>II]the meeting shed light on Jack’s real personality who had asserted that…</p>

<p>this phrase is incorrect because the “who” refers to “Jack’s real personality”, and it was Jack not his personality doing the asserting. Grammatically that is. His co-workers might have felt it was his personality :)</p>

<p>Anyway, I think that’s what you were asking…?</p>