A study of food resources in the North Pacific between 1989

[tim]

Your logic seems okay, but it is a little difficult to deal with in the abstract. If you can come up with some specific examples we can help you determine whether they would be correct or incorrect.

[cshen02]

Can I say A is wrong, because
1/ present participle "resulting from..." is used to modify "food supplies", when it should primarily modify the whole preceding clause and the subject?
2/ the meaning "seabed suffers from food supply" is illogical? This point is so subtle that Im not totally comfortable with it...though I force myself to remember it

So I wanna know what is the main issue with choice A.

Cheers!

[RonPurewal]

Can I say A is wrong, because
1/ present participle "resulting from..." is used to modify "food supplies", when it should primarily modify the whole preceding clause and the subject?
2/ the meaning "seabed suffers from food supply" is illogical? This point is so subtle that Im not totally comfortable with it...though I force myself to remember it

So I wanna know what is the main issue with choice A.

Cheers!

These issues are already addressed in this thread. Have you read the entire thread?

[AjayS677]

Hi Ron,

I am not sure whether the point that i am about to raise has been mentioned earlier but i feel there is a meaning difference in Choice A and Choice B, which seem to be the only two options worth considering.
Option A states that creatures were suffering from dwindling food supplies.
Option B states that creatures were suffering because of dwindling food supplies.

We can suffer because of lack of food not from lack of food.

Am i thinking in the right direction?

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron,

I am not sure whether the point that i am about to raise has been mentioned earlier

^^ you know what this means you should do, right? (:

please read the thread!

in this case, you would be duly rewarded by the time you got to just the fourth post on page 1. that post -- again, just the fourth (and my first) in this entire thread -- addresses EXACTLY this issue. please check it out. thanks.

[AjayS677]

Thank you Ron. Yes, my bad that i did not read the whole discussion properly.

Thank you again for your time and help.

[RonPurewal]

sure.

remember... we leave these discussion threads up here for a reason. (:

[charmanineW924]

I cannot understand A ,so I looked all the threads above ,but I am a little bit confused about it .I write down all my understanding about A ,can you review it and correct me if I am wrong ?
A is wrong in the following reasons :
1）the use of “ comma resulting from ”. Because the timeframe of “comma verbing ”is follow the preceding clause ,so actually they are simultaneous . And “A resulting from B” means that A happens after B ,so it is wrong here .
2）The core of the sentence in A is “the creatures were suffering from food supplies ”, and apparently they were suffering from the dwindle of food supplies ,so it is wrong here .\
3）“possibly resulting from ” modifies the “food supplies ” which means that food supplies is the result of the increasing temperatures ---->I cannot understand here .
I think the “comma resulting from “ is a “comma verbing ” ,so it should modifies the preceding clause. So it means that “creatures were suffering ... ” is the result of “the increasing temperatures “ ,which makes sense . I think whether we say the whole thing “creatures of the seabed were suffering from dwindling food supplies” is the result of the “increasing temperatures ” or we say “the dwindling of food supplies ” is the result of the “increasing temperatures ” ,both of them make sense .

[RonPurewal]

#1 and #2 are valid observations. either of those provides ample justification for eliminating the choice.

if #3 is still not clear, you should just let it go. otherwise you're putting yourself in danger of over-thinking the issue.
(note the relative simplicity of #1 and #2. this is the cornerstone of SC success: you should eliminate choices for reasons that are simple.)

[RichaChampion]

Thanks Ron for a fantastic discussion.

[RonPurewal]

you're welcome.

[DiJ92]

Dear Ron
I have several questions


1. I understand that the core part of "dwindling food supplies" and "increasing sea surface temperatures" are food suppliers and temperatures, respectively; the "dwindling" and "increasing", as adjectives, describe food supplies and sea surface temperatures. However, in some cases, the core part of " Verbing noun" is verbing. For example, eating lots of food is bad; in this sentence, "eating lots of food" is a gerund and the core part of this gerund is "eating". Therefore, can I make a conclusion that when "Verbing noun" is a gerund, its focus is verbing and wheh "verbing noun" is a particle, its focus is the noun. Could you please evaluate my statements?

If not, how can we distinguish when "verbing" is describing noun (in others words, the focus is the noun) from when "verbing" is the focus?

2 there is a sentence: food supplies were dwindling, a result of an increase in sea surface temperatures.
in this sentence, a result is an appositive modifies to describe the whole sentence. In other words, that supplier were dwindling is a result of in increase. Am I right?

[RonPurewal]

1/
i don't know the terminology you're using—but you will never need (or benefit from) this kind of terminology.

remember, the FIRST STEP of any sentence correction problem is to establish the intended meaning.
in context, it should ALWAYS be COMPLETELY CLEAR whether "__ing" is a noun or an adjective. there is no possible way this could be ambiguous—if one interpretation makes sense, the other one will be absurd.


2/
do not "invent your own versions" of GMAC's sentences. if you try to do this, your versions will always contain issues that are not tested on this exam.
(this exam only tests about 1% of the things that could possibly go wrong with an english sentence.)

[boruc106]

can anyone explain E?

[StaceyKoprince]

Please make sure to read (and follow!) the forum guidelines when posting. You've got to work harder for this knowledge—you'll learn better that way.

Please tell us your specific reasoning / thinking and anything that you find confusing about this answer choice. If a choice you're asking about has already been discussed earlier in the thread, tell us which parts of that discussion do make sense to you and which parts don't. Earlier posts in this thread provide good examples of how to do this.