SC Flash card #11: concrete vs action nouns

[skhalid]

As I understand, concrete nouns cannot be made parallel to action nouns. Flash card 11 in SC suggests otherwise. Can you please explain?
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Identify the error:
The murder was an expressing of
longstanding tensions.

This question is about parallelism. Concrete nouns (murder)
and simple gerunds (expressing) cannot be made parallel.
Correct: The murder was an expression of longstanding
tensions.
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[JonathanSchneider]

Hm, I'm not sure why you are in disagreement here? Is the issue that you are calling this -ing form an action noun, while the flash card is calling it a gerund? If so, then you are basically saying the same thing.

[skhalid]

Thanks for your reply.

There are a couple of issues:

1) Murder: I would think that it is an action noun. If that is the case, the explanation is correct i.e. Murder and expression both are action nouns and parallel.

2) Murder: If murder is a concrete noun, then in the correct version, murder and expression cannot be parallel.

1) makes sense to me. I just want to make sure :)

[esledge]

The basic events here (in verb form) are "to murder" and "to express."

An action noun is one that refers to an action, not to a participant in the action.
Here, the action noun form would be "the/a murder" and "the/an expression."

If an action noun form did not exist, we substitute the complex gerund "the murdering of X" or "an expression of Y." The GMAT always prefers the action noun form, if it exists. If you see a split between "the expression" and "the expressing," it's likely that the former is correct, unless there is some other grammar problem present.

A concrete noun is defined as one you can touch, see, taste, smell, or hear. Thus, I think "murder" is actually an abstract noun: "Murder is unforgivable." You might hear screams, see blood, smell gun powder, etc, but not the murder itself.

Basically, I wouldn't get too hung up on the various terms for types of nouns. For GMAT purposes, rely on the splits and the idea of parallelism as matching.