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It is correct that the "necessary" in bold in the following sentence.

If it is skills' adjective, I wonder why it isn't placed before the word of skills? If the "necessary" be placed before "skills", will the object of the infinitive phrase change? - "to make successful scientific presentations"?

Sentence:

The main purpose of the seminar is to provide students with the opportunity to develop the confidence and skills necessary to make successful scientific presentations.

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  • It looks like like a kind of whiz-deletion. You can think of it as "...confidence and skills which are necessary..."
    – stangdon
    Aug 22, 2021 at 16:42

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In "the confidence and skills necessary to make successful scientific presentations", "necessary to make successful scientific presentations" is an adjective phrase that postmodifies "confidence and skills".

Even though most adjective modifiers precede the noun modified, this is a long adjective phrase, so it gets shifted after the noun. ("...the necessary to make successful scientific presentations confidence and skills" would be hard to understand.)

As noted above, you can paraphrase by adding "that are" before "necessary".

You could also say "the necessary confidence and skills to make successful scientific presentations". Either way, making presentations is what the confidence and skills are necessary for.

This page gives a couple of other postmodifying adjective phrase examples:

  • I bought all the bottles left in the shop.
  • He was a man proud of his success
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The main purpose of the seminar is to provide students with the opportunity to develop the confidence and skills necessary to make successful scientific presentations.

The sentence above can be rewritten as follows without changing the meaning.

The main purpose of the seminar is to provide students with the opportunity to develop the confidence and skills (that are) required to make successful scientific presentations.

So the word necessary introduces the phrase: to make successful scientific presentations. It does not modify skills.

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  • Thanks for the reply. Is it correct as follows? The "to make successful sientific presentations" explains the "necessary", the "necessary to make successful scientific presentations" is placed after the "skills" to modify it.
    – Phraza
    Aug 21, 2021 at 23:03
  • You've said it.
    – Ronald Sole
    Aug 22, 2021 at 7:23

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