@ Claudia 08:02 Sep 17, 2013
I think you have every reason to be unsure about this, since both readings make sense: the insufficient supply is in fact the cause of the load shedding (or rolling blackouts: deliberate periodic shutdowns), but it is also the cause of the outages due to load shedding.
I think that "caused" is syntactically linked to "outages", rather than to "load shedding", because of the comma after "shedding", which implies that "outages due to load shedding" is a noun phrase to which "caused" refers. If the writer had intended "caused" to refer specifically to "load shedding", the comma should have been omitted, and the sentence should have read as follows:
"[...] widespread outages, due to load shedding caused by insufficient supply typically associated with droughts, have occurred [...]".
At least, that is how I see it in principle, though commas are not always used so carefully in practice. |