Even though her career was cut short

by **mclaren7** Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:17 am

Dear moderators and friends,

Even though her career was cut short when she was in her prime and the fifteen recordings she made were disappointing artistically as well as technically, Olive Fremstad (1871-1951) has never been entirely forgotten by opera aficionados.

A. though her career was cut short when she was in her prime and the fifteen recordings she made were

B. though her career was cut short while in her prime, with the fifteen recordings she made

C. as her career had been cut short when she was in her prime, with the fifteen recordings she had made

D. with her career having been cut short when she was in her prime, and the fifteen recordings she made were

E. with her career cut short while in her prime, and that the fifteen recordings she made were

Are BCDE all wrong because there is no appropriate noun to be modified after the first comma?

Thanks
KH

by **guest** Sun Mar 23, 2008 1:18 pm

E) Not parallel.
D) Wrong beacuse this choice uses "Having"
C) Wrong "Even as" sounds awkward
B) Saying that her career was cut in short because of the 15 recordings
So onlt choice left is A

by **suyash** Mon Mar 24, 2008 1:57 am

AGREE WITH THE ABOVE POST...IT IS A....WHATS THE OA?

by **RonPurewal** Wed Mar 26, 2008 6:20 am

suyash Wrote:AGREE WITH THE ABOVE POST...IT IS A....WHATS THE OA?

let's work backwards through this one.

choice e
* '...that the 15 recordings...' is not only nonparallel with the words immediately following 'with', but it's also grammatically nonsensical (you can't start a sentence with 'even that...').

choice d
* lack of parallelism again ('with her career having been cut ...' is nonparallel to 'the ... recordings ... were ...'). also, 'with her career having been cut short' is very unnecessarily wordy, especially in comparison to the much more concise and mellifluous wording in choices a and b.

choice c
* 'even as' suggests that the two things being describe d (the cutting short of her career and her not being forgotten by opera aficionados) are contemporaneous events, an idea that doesn't make any sense.

choice b
* the phrase 'while in her prime' necessarily refers to the subject of the clause in which it is found. therefore, that clause appears to be saying that 'career' is some sort of female entity, and that the career was cut short while in 'her' (i.e., the career's, according to this strange logic) prime. that's ... bad.

choice a is correct. incidentally, it's the only choice that exhibits proper parallelism, which alone is reason enough to choose it.

by **tuftsv** Sun Jul 25, 2010 4:17 am

i would like to make sure about the modifier of this sentence.
As i know that when a sentence begins with a participail or prepositional phrase, the immediate subject should be do that action. I'm just wondering that if there are two modifiers connected by "and" (like this sentence), does the following subject have to do "all" these two actions?

if so, in this case, "her career" and "the fifteen recording she made" both modifys the subject Olive Fremstad?
thanks.

by **manish1sinha** Mon Aug 02, 2010 1:49 pm

isn't the clause after and in option A independent?
"..though her career was cut short when she was in her prime and the fifteen recordings she made were disappointing artistically as well as technically,.."

If yes then could someone please explain why it is not "comma and"?
I am trying to understand the construction and not questioning the official answer.

by **RonPurewal** Thu Aug 26, 2010 9:44 am

tuftsv Wrote:i would like to make sure about the modifier of this sentence.
As i know that when a sentence begins with a participail or prepositional phrase, the immediate subject should be do that action. I'm just wondering that if there are two modifiers connected by "and" (like this sentence), does the following subject have to do "all" these two actions?

if so, in this case, "her career" and "the fifteen recording she made" both modifys the subject Olive Fremstad?
thanks.

the rule that you are stating is valid, but it does not apply to this particular example; the words before the comma in this example are not either of the two types that you've mentioned.
those words are an entire sentence -- in fact, two entire sentences, connected by "and". (the subject of the first clause is "her career", and the subject of the second clause is "the 15 recordings".)
since those clauses have their own subjects, there is no issue with the following subject.

on the other hand, IF one of the constructions you mentioned actually did appear in compound form, then, yes, both of them would have to apply to the following subject.
e.g.
exhausted from physical exertion and depressed from the loss of her father, susie slumped onto the bed and drifted into a deep sleep.
--> both of the past participles ("exhausted" and "depressed") refer to the subject "susie".

by **lusecret** Fri Jan 07, 2011 2:14 am

manish1sinha Wrote:isn't the clause after and in option A independent?
"..though her career was cut short when she was in her prime and the fifteen recordings she made were disappointing artistically as well as technically,.."

If yes then could someone please explain why it is not "comma and"?
I am trying to understand the construction and not questioning the official answer.

Ron,

can you please answer the question asked above?

My guess is that it is ok to use "and" to connect two "independence clauses" together if they appear in a dependent caluse (Even though....).

by **RonPurewal** Tue Jan 11, 2011 3:24 am

lusecret Wrote:
manish1sinha Wrote:isn't the clause after and in option A independent?
"..though her career was cut short when she was in her prime and the fifteen recordings she made were disappointing artistically as well as technically,.."

If yes then could someone please explain why it is not "comma and"?
I am trying to understand the construction and not questioning the official answer.

Ron,

can you please answer the question asked above?

My guess is that it is ok to use "and" to connect two "independence clauses" together if they appear in a dependent caluse (Even though....).

yeah, that's pretty much accurate. in other words, you are omitting the comma in order to give an extra degree of clarity to the structure of the sentence.

i.e., if the sentence consists of nothing other than two independent clauses connected by "and", then you are almost certain to see a comma between those clauses -- because, in that case, the presence of the comma helps to elucidate the structure of the sentence.

on the other hand, if the structure of the sentence is actually
EVEN THOUGH (clause1 AND clause2), (clause3)
... then the lack of a comma between "clause1" and "clause2" actually renders the overall structure of the sentence much clearer.

so, in short, yes, you're right about this.

by **ankitp** Sat Feb 26, 2011 6:46 pm

RonPurewal Wrote:choice e
* '...that the 15 recordings...' is not only nonparallel with the words immediately following 'with', but it's also grammatically nonsensical (you can't start a sentence with 'even that...').

Ron, quick questions for you.

Choice e has ", and that the fifteen ", I thought "Even" wouldn't apply to it because it's ", and" vs " and" .

Thanks
p.s - when I'm done this exam - I need to buy you at least (> 5 steak dinners ).

by **RonPurewal** Mon Feb 28, 2011 6:22 am

ankitp Wrote:
RonPurewal Wrote:choice e
* '...that the 15 recordings...' is not only nonparallel with the words immediately following 'with', but it's also grammatically nonsensical (you can't start a sentence with 'even that...').

Ron, quick questions for you.

Choice e has ", and that the fifteen ", I thought "Even" wouldn't apply to it because it's ", and" vs " and" .

Thanks
p.s - when I'm done this exam - I need to buy you at least (> 5 steak dinners ).

i don't see an actual question at all. (your original post actually said "questions", plural -- what were those?)

in any case, regarding choice (e), there's no sense in worrying about such niceties as comma placement -- there's a HUGE parallelism error in that choice.
with her career cut short... vs. that the fifteen recordings she made were...
-- nowhere close to being parallel!

by **ankitp** Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:08 am

RonPurewal Wrote:i don't see an actual question at all. (your original post actually said "questions", plural -- what were those?)

LOL, I seem to have mistyped. Thanks for explanation, I HATE Parallelism, do you recommend a good technique to approach these problems, I haven't had a lot of trouble with the OG but the GMAT Prep questions are just killing me.

by **RonPurewal** Fri Mar 04, 2011 5:48 am

ankitp Wrote:
RonPurewal Wrote:i don't see an actual question at all. (your original post actually said "questions", plural -- what were those?)

LOL, I seem to have mistyped. Thanks for explanation, I HATE Parallelism, do you recommend a good technique to approach these problems, I haven't had a lot of trouble with the OG but the GMAT Prep questions are just killing me.

well -- if you scan for parallelism right from the start, while you are reading the prompt sentence, you should be able to find it when it exists.

when you read the prompt sentence, you should be looking for exactly 2 things:
1) MEANING / CONTEXT
2) PARALLELISM

it's really important to find parallel structures right at the beginning of a problem, because it's especially dangerous not to find them. (if you miss any other type of error, then you just don't notice it -- but if you miss parallel structures, you are going to think that they are two independent errors!!)

by **aliassad** Sun Jul 01, 2012 4:33 pm

Sorry for reopening this thread. Just wanted to clarify a is parallel because there are two modifiers describing Olive ?

by **RonPurewal** Tue Jul 03, 2012 6:20 am

aliassad Wrote:Sorry for reopening this thread. Just wanted to clarify a is parallel because there are two modifiers describing Olive ?

those are not modifiers; those are complete clauses. if you have whole clauses, you don't have to assign, specifically, what they "describe".

e.g.
even though the sky was cloudy, i could see planes approaching the airport.
here "the sky was cloudy" is a whole clause, so there's no need for it to specifically "describe" anything; all that matters is that it's relevant to the following sentence.