GMAT PREP SC: Single-Family House...

[aps_asks]

Ron ..Ur explanation is good....But How to think of such a thing during time pressure....

[RonPurewal]

Ron ..Ur explanation is good....But How to think of such a thing during time pressure....

which thing?

if you're referring to the last post, this question suggests that you aren't setting priorities properly.
parallelism is the single most frequently tested topic on the entire exam! if there's one thing that you absolutely should "think of ... during time pressure" -- i.e., one thing you should look for before you look for anything else (after you figure out what the sentence means, of course) -- then that one thing would be parallelism.

[niharika.jain03]

As the part from "its framework..." is a kind of a modifier, it cannot contain a complete verb and has to contain a participle. Also the participle has to be parallel with "overlaid".
Hence, we can eliminate options D and E.

Now, we have to find the right option amongst A, B and C.
C can be eliminated as it contains the pronoun "them" which is ambiguous as it can not refer to poles.
B can be eliminated as it contains a relative pronoun "that" which is again faulty.
Hence, the correct option is A.

[tim]

thanks. let us know if there are any further questions on this one..

[gauravtyagigmat]

Since this a ,<conjunction>, don't we need the sentence after and to be a independent clause?

ah, i see what you're asking. but, no, frustratingly enough, this is not a case of "X + , + conj + Y".
basically, you are wrongly interpreting that comma as part of the structure of the overall "skeleton" of the sentence, when it in fact belongs to the appositive modifier.

i'll illustrate with a color code:
The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern california, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

those commas belong to the orange modifier, not to the overall structure of the sentence. if you remove the orange modifier, those commas will disappear right along with it.

in general, i don't really think that this sort of thing is tested on the gmat.
i do know that the gmat absolutely requires the comma after "Y" in the list "X, Y, and Z" -- and that this particular distinction has shown up in several official problems, much to the chagrin of students who grew up learning british english -- but that's the only one of these comma-placement issues that i've so far seen actually tested.

I agree that its framework..feet is a modifier
because
had it been a clause .It would have been connetcted by coordinating conjunction or subordinating conjuction.

My question is what this modifier is modifying.
if i go by meaning it appears to me that it is modifying "The single-family house constructed by the Yana" ,but a noun modifier should touch the noun it is modifying.
Even if we consider one of the exception when noun modifier is allowed not to touch noun it is modifiying
1.When a short non essential phrase intervenes
"The single-family house constructed by the Yana"
is followed by a non essential phrase
"a Native American people who lived in what is now northern california"
and thereafter "was conical in shape" comes and then comes our modifier(its framework..)

so please make it clear what this modifier(its framework..)
is modifying

also is it modifying "conical in shape"?

[thanghnvn]

there is a pattern in grammar books.

main clause+ (with) noun+adjective.

"(with) noun+ adjective " is an adverb showing condition, reason, detail of the main verb/clause.

when "with" appear, remember that "with+noun" may or may not refer to a noun in the main clause.

with his hand paralized, he still learn hard

with the price of rice increasing, many person eat less. (with+noun refer to no noun in the main clause)

the pattern "with+noun+adjective, main clause" happen many times on gmatprep.


I think you should download some grammar books in pdf form on the internet, and look for the term "absolute phrase" in the books. you can get full explanation.

[RonPurewal]

I agree that its framework..feet is a modifier
because
had it been a clause .It would have been connetcted by coordinating conjunction or subordinating conjuction.

My question is what this modifier is modifying.
if i go by meaning it appears to me that it is modifying "The single-family house constructed by the Yana" ,but a noun modifier should touch the noun it is modifying.
Even if we consider one of the exception when noun modifier is allowed not to touch noun it is modifiying
1.When a short non essential phrase intervenes
"The single-family house constructed by the Yana"
is followed by a non essential phrase
"a Native American people who lived in what is now northern california"
and thereafter "was conical in shape" comes and then comes our modifier(its framework..)

so please make it clear what this modifier(its framework..)
is modifying

also is it modifying "conical in shape"?

These kinds of things describe the subject of the preceding sentence. They should also have some sort of logical connection to what is stated in that sentence.

E.g.,
Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.
--> Luisa's teeth are chattering. The relationship to being outside in the cold is obvious.

Even if there's another noun, the phrase still describes the subject.
Roberta listened to her daughter, tears forming in her eyes.
--> Tears are forming in Roberta's eyes (because of what her daughter is saying).

[gauravtyagigmat]

I agree that its framework..feet is a modifier
because
had it been a clause .It would have been connetcted by coordinating conjunction or subordinating conjuction.

My question is what this modifier is modifying.
if i go by meaning it appears to me that it is modifying "The single-family house constructed by the Yana" ,but a noun modifier should touch the noun it is modifying.
Even if we consider one of the exception when noun modifier is allowed not to touch noun it is modifiying
1.When a short non essential phrase intervenes
"The single-family house constructed by the Yana"
is followed by a non essential phrase
"a Native American people who lived in what is now northern california"
and thereafter "was conical in shape" comes and then comes our modifier(its framework..)

so please make it clear what this modifier(its framework..)
is modifying

also is it modifying "conical in shape"?

These kinds of things describe the subject of the preceding sentence. They should also have some sort of logical connection to what is stated in that sentence.

E.g.,
Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.
--> Luisa's teeth are chattering. The relationship to being outside in the cold is obvious.

Even if there's another noun, the phrase still describes the subject.
Roberta listened to her daughter, tears forming in her eyes.
--> Tears are forming in Roberta's eyes (because of what her daughter is saying).

How do we recognize such modifiers in the sentence.
I guess it is another exception to the noun modifier,which is suppose to touch the noun it modifies.

While solving this question when i read
,"its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark,
either cedar or pine" , this part of sentence i thought there should be a verb before overlaid (was/are overlaid ) and some how I selected option D (I didnt knew as height as range is wrong construction).

Generally when we see modifiers that are seprated by comma.Those modifiers do not have subject.But in this modifier(its framework....pine) we do not have a helping verb to make complete verb.
is it the case of absolute phrase
its framework of poles is noun phrase,
modified by its modifier overlaid with slabs of bark,
either cedar or pine
Am i correct ?Please explain

will it be correct if i replace as high as with to a height of in option D
so I am confused that what concept should i take away from this question..

Is it a question worth noting down in My sentence correction Error Logs or should i leave and move ahead without this question

[RonPurewal]

Gaurav, the problem is that you're exerting way too much effort trying to produce a formal analysis of this modifier -- at the expense of understanding how it works.

The point is to recognize correct constructions, and to know what they look like and how they work.
It doesn't matter whether you can label them with the right terminology. (I don't even know what "absolute phrase" means.)

So, if you see this ...
Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.
... and you know that it's correct,

then you can see this ...
The house was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with xxxx
... and know that it's also correct.

In each case, the pronoun ("her" / "its") refers to the subject of the preceding part, and the modifier has an essential and easily discernible relationship to that preceding part.
That's about all I can tell you here. But it's the pattern recognition -- not the grammatical labels -- that is the point. The terminology is irrelevant. (You can call this modifier a "pink flamingo" if you want, as long as you know how it works and what it looks like.)

[RonPurewal]

But in this modifier(its framework....pine) we do not have a helping verb to make complete verb.

If you had a complete verb there, you'd have a run-on sentence (complete sentence + comma + another complete sentence). Not ok.

will it be correct if i replace as high as with to a height of in option D

Choice D still has non-parallelism between "overlaid" and "was banked".

[gauravtyagigmat]

Gaurav, the problem is that you're exerting way too much effort trying to produce a formal analysis of this modifier -- at the expense of understanding how it works.

The point is to recognize correct constructions, and to know what they look like and how they work.
It doesn't matter whether you can label them with the right terminology. (I don't even know what "absolute phrase" means.)

So, if you see this ...
Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.
... and you know that it's correct,

then you can see this ...
The house was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with xxxx
... and know that it's also correct.

In each case, the pronoun ("her" / "its") refers to the subject of the preceding part, and the modifier has an essential and easily discernible relationship to that preceding part.
That's about all I can tell you here. But it's the pattern recognition -- not the grammatical labels -- that is the point. The terminology is irrelevant. (You can call this modifier a "pink flamingo" if you want, as long as you know how it works and what it looks like.)

Thankyou Ron pointing out my error
I am not trying to do formal analysis
Generally i have seen modifier phrases , which do not have subject verb relationship
either subject was missing or verb was absent in (modifier)phrases
But here I found unique case where Subject and verb is present but verb is not complete, hence i got uncomfortable.

Question1. how do I realize in two minutes that this sentence contains incomplete verb and it is acting as modifier

ex
An overwhelming proportion of tigers work in America, many
of which are in circus

many....circus is a modifier phrase
but it seems to me a complete sentence.

now i am confused
Question 2. what is a phrase exactly
Though i know phrase is group of words which do not contain subject verb relationship

Question 3.What is subordinate clause,
I know clauses contain subject verb relationship.Subordinate clauses begins with subordinating conjunction.If we remove a subordinating conjunction from subordinating clause it becomes a clause (independent clause)

Please help i am extemly confused and confusion is a great state of unrest

[RonPurewal]

I don't know these terms (phrase, subordinate clause, etc.), so I can't really help you with them. As I mentioned above, the point is (a) to recognize correct constructions, and (b) to know what they look like and how they work.

ex
An overwhelming proportion of tigers work in America, many
of which are in circus

many....circus is a modifier phrase
but it seems to me a complete sentence.

The entire reason for the existence of "which" is that it's NOT the subject of a complete sentence. Instead, it creates a modifier. (It's impossible to create a complete sentence whose subject is "which".)

"Many of them are in the circus" is a complete sentence. "Many of whom" and "many of which" are modifiers.

[gauravtyagigmat]

I don't know these terms (phrase, subordinate clause, etc.), so I can't really help you with them. As I mentioned above, the point is (a) to recognize correct constructions, and (b) to know what they look like and how they work.

ex
An overwhelming proportion of tigers work in America, many
of which are in circus

many....circus is a modifier phrase
but it seems to me a complete sentence.

The entire reason for the existence of "which" is that it's NOT the subject of a complete sentence. Instead, it creates a modifier. (It's impossible to create a complete sentence whose subject is "which".)

"Many of them are in the circus" is a complete sentence. "Many of whom" and "many of which" are modifiers.

what is a complete sentence.?

[jlucero]

what is a complete sentence.?

That's a question that would be answered much more easily by a simple web search than by asking on a forum board.

It's a series of words with a noun and a verb and can stand alone. Basically, it's a sentence.

[josefdong]

wow, that's a bear of a problem. geez louise.

you are misreading the parallelism. you are correct that 'banked with dirt...' has to be parallel to something. unfortunately, though, the 'something' in question happens to be 'overlaid with slabs...'.

in other words, 'banked with dirt' applies to the framework of poles, not to the house itself.

but you have identified the other problem: there is a meaning shift. if you say 'dirt as high as four feet', you're implying that most of the dirt is well below the four-foot level, but that four feet is the maximum height. the correct answer choice, on the other hand, states that the height of the dirt bank is consistently three to four feet. remember, if the meaning of the original sentence is intellligible, you are not allowed to change it - a principle that decides the meaning in this case. (the meaning in choice d isn't absurd, but it conflicts with what you're told in the original sentence.)

a final problem with choice d is that the phrase 'as high as' should be followed by one value, not a range.
some of our players weigh as much as 300-325 pounds --> bad phrasing
some of our players weigh as much as 325 pounds --> good phrasing

Hi Ron, it's my first post on the forum, thank you.

In terms of "as high as", is there a chance in which "as high as" is just a noun-modifier that directly modifies dirt(because of the touch rule)? But the intended meaning is that the framework(banked with dirt) has a height of 3-4 feet. So, "to a height of 3-4 feet", as a preposition phrase, can modify "the framework". I just exclude "as high as" because of this.

Is that right? If not, pls. give your explanation.
Thx in advance!