GMAT PREP SC: Single-Family House...

[RonPurewal]

"banked" is not a verb. it's a modifier, in parallel with "overlaid".

if you put a verb there, the result would not even be a sentence anymore.

[jabgt]

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

Dear Ron sir,

Could I confirm with you whether my below refreshed understanding regarding the usage of "as adj as ..." + " xxx (number of) unit" is correct? Thank you!

After studying above post along with another two related lectures from you -- which I quote at the end-- altogether entirely again, I realize my original understanding is wrong: it's not "as adj as" can not be followed by concrete certain number of unit (length/size/mass...), but "as adj as" should not be followed by "long/big/heavy"<- that's what causes the redundancy.

To be clear,is my understand toward below examples right? The examples in red are all wrong, while the examples in blue are all correct:

as big as 30 feet <-correct
as tall as 7'6" <-correct
as much as 325 pounds <-correct

as big as 30 feet long<-wrong
as tall as 7'6" high <-wrong
as much as 325 pounds heavy<-wrong

"by convention, we don't say people are X number of feet/meters "high"; we say "tall". because we just do.

if you write Players in this league are as tall as 7'6", then nothing is wrong there at all."

link here:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... e.#p112578

"REDUNDANCY
you don't say both "as big as..." and "long" in the same sentence. you can use only one of these words, both of which express the same idea (i.e., length or size)."

link here:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... 0th#p25674

Thank you so much!

Best Regards,
Christine

[RonPurewal]

the only thing that matters is that you can recognize the RED versions as WRONG, when you see them.

(you should not waste your time trying to learn how to write the correct versions.)

yes, those red versions are all wrong.

[prepp]

Hi Ron,

Can you please explain this sentence in your example:

Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.

Luisa came in from outside is a complete Sentence and conveys a complete idea thus it is an Independent clause - ie has a subject and a verb

Her teeth chattering from the cold... I will immediately think - oh, this should be two independent clauses separated by a comma and thus the second sentence is WRONG because there is no verb... The correct sentence could be:

Luisa came in from outside, and her teeth were chattering from the cold.

Now, one could argue that and is incorrect because her teeth were chattering from the cold is related to Luisa.

What about

Luisa came in from outside, and with her teeth chattering from the cold?

or

Luisa came in from outside, with her teeth chattering from the cold? - is this correct?

To sum it up,

How do I deal with this type of construction in the exam - what clues will help me not confusing the same?
I could have

X, and Y as a parallel construction with Y's subject mentioned in X.

Please help explain!

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]

Can you please explain this sentence in your example:

Luisa came in from outside, her teeth chattering from the cold.

i can't really think of any more ways to present this, beyond what's already in this discussion thread.

...but, that isn't what's important here. what's important is the same thing i already mentioned to another student on this thread:
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 what meanings/relationships are implied by them.

Luisa came in from outside, and her teeth were chattering from the cold.

^^ in this sentence, "and" is nonsense (as you pointed out).

Luisa came in from outside, and with her teeth chattering from the cold?

^^ this version has a clear problem with non-parallelism. (what are you trying to connect with "and"?)

Luisa came in from outside, with her teeth chattering from the cold? - is this correct?

^^ this would be acceptable, too.

[RonPurewal]

To sum it up,

How do I deal with this type of construction in the exam

^^ you are forgetting the most important thing here, which is that this is a multiple-choice exam!

that means 2 things:

1/ generally speaking, you will very rarely have to make individual decisions about these types of constructions -- and you will NEVER have to consider them in isolation. you'll always have a "backdrop" of OTHER answer choices against which to consider these things.

...and, even more importantly,
2/ if you're looking at some subtle or nuanced difference -- and/or some rare construction -- then you're almost certainly being DISTRACTED from something FAR MORE IMPORTANT/FUNDAMENTAL.
this ^^ is the real problem with asking questions like this at random, without tying them to an actual test item: it's actually quite likely that these sorts of things were included in a problem primarily to draw your attention AWAY from some super-basic issue (e.g., non-parallelism, subject-verb disagreement, pronoun disagreement, etc.)

[JbhB682]

Is this a fair elimination strategy for "B" =

‘As…. as’ is used to show a comparison between two entities.

Option B :

banked with dirt (as high as) THAT of three to four feet

So you would be comparing two types of dirt in option B

One type of dirt is
-- dirt that is banked
vs
-- another type of dirt (this dirt is three to four feet high and not banked to the framework of poles)

[esledge]

So you would be comparing two types of dirt in option B

Yes, which is not the intent. There's only the dirt around the framework of poles, and the point is just to say how high it is piled.

One type of dirt is
-- dirt that is banked
vs
-- another type of dirt (this dirt is three to four feet high and not banked to the framework of poles)

Even worse, even if a comparison of two sets of dirt were intended, "that (dirt) of three to four feet" doesn't say what you have logically paraphrased in the 2nd part above. As written, (B) can be interpreted as if "three to four feet" possess the other dirt, since "of" can mean possession and there's nothing about the other dirt's height.

[JbhB682]

Hi Experts - with regards to parallelism for option D

Per my understanding - parallelism is NOT the issue with option D

The X element [was Conical in shape] and Y element [was Banked with dirt] makes meaningful sense with the root phrase [The single-family house]

Below is an image of house banked on 8 feet of dirt /land for example.

The issue with D is not to do with parallelism but to do with "as high as three to four feet"

Is my understanding accurate on how to eliminate D ?


https://imgur.com/Ksj7VMS

[esledge]

Per my understanding - parallelism is NOT the issue with option D ... The issue with D is not to do with parallelism but to do with "as high as three to four feet"

That understanding is correct.

[JbhB682]

Hi Experts - i was curious regarding the comparison marker "As High as" or "As Tall as"

Do the nouns on both sides of the comparison marker have to be apples to apples only ?

For example -- Can I say ?

Players in the XFL are as tall as 6 feet

I thought this may not be accurate because you are comparing a noun [Players] to another noun -6 feet [But the noun is a metric, i.e. 6 feet and not another player]

Normally with regular comparison markers (such as Like) you have to compare Apples to Apples only.

[esledge]

For example -- Can I say ?

Players in the XFL are as tall as 6 feet

I thought this may not be accurate because you are comparing a noun [Players] to another noun -6 feet [But the noun is a metric, i.e. 6 feet and not another player]

Yes, you can say this, because as you suggest, "6 feet" is equivalent to a metric of height, as required by the "as tall as" comparison marker.

I'm skirting the rules without copying too much text, to mention the only applicable example I could find in the current OG: #944 in OG 2021, if you want to check it out. The "as big as" choices are not wrong because a noun is compared to a metric. They are wrong because the metric is of length ("30 feet long"), not "bigness," as required by the comparison marker (so the noun-to-metric comparison was not the problem!).