She has an interview next week for a teaching job in Paris. Does “in Paris” describe “a teaching job” (The job is in Paris, not the interview.) or “an interview” (The interview is in Paris, not the job)? Thanks.
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2 Answers
There is no consistent rule for something like this. You have to use common sense. It's good style to to have the phrase modify the closest previous noun, for example:
She saw an odd building near the Louvre as she walked along the crowded street.
She saw an odd building as she walked along the crowded street near the Louvre.
but you can easily write a sentence that doesn't follow this:
She wore a woolen cap as she walked along the crowded street that her grandmother knitted for her.
Obviously her grandmother didn't knit the street, so the postmodifier phrase must refer to the hat. Again, this is a confusing sentence, one we would call a "misplaced modifier", but it's easy to make similar sentences that would normally be fine, such as this classic misplaced modifier is from the comedian Groucho Marx:
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I dunno.
The humor is in the misdirected expectation. Logically we would assume that "in my pajamas" modifies "I", as in "I was in my pajamas", but that turns out not to be the case.
In your examples, if we assume the author is writing with good style, then logically the teaching job is in Paris. However, without more information, it could be that the interview is in Paris. Again, we dunno.
The example is ambiguous, but any reader would expect that both the job and the interview are in the same place.
If it's not the case, you'd always say something like one of these:
- She has an interview in Paris next week for a job in Bordeaux
- She has an interview next week for a job in Bordeaux, but the interview is actually in Paris at the headquarters
- She has an interview next for a job in Paris, but the job itself is in Bordeaux
