SC : Humphry Davy

[YuY283]

Hi, instructors, sorry to bump up an old thread, in choice B, in the official explanation, "critique and his envisioning are not parallel", why they are not parallel? "critique" is an action verb, "his envisioning of ......" is a complex gerund, action verb and complex gerund can be parallel. maybe I am wrong, please clarify, thank you very much!

I don't have any idea what "complex gerund" means, so I will sidestep that part of the discussion.

Parallelism is a RELATIVE decision"”a "beauty contest".

What you're doing"”trying to look at an individual choice and judge whether it's "parallel""”is needlessly fraught.
Just compare.

* a critique ... a vision
* a critique ... his envisioning

There's a very clear winner and a very clear loser here.

Don't make this harder than it is.

Hi Ron,

For the parallel problem, can I say B is wrong since a plain noun, "critique" cannot be parallel to the gerund, "his envisioning"?

Thanks for your explanation.

[RonPurewal]

i don't know that terminology, so honestly i can't say.
but that's not important.

what's important is that you're making this unnecessarily complicated.

i'll quote myself:

What you're doing—trying to look at an individual choice and judge whether it's 'parallel'—is needlessly fraught.
Just compare.

* a critique ... a vision
BETTER.

* a critique ... his envisioning
WORSE.

[YuY283]

i don't know that terminology, so honestly i can't say.
but that's not important.

what's important is that you're making this unnecessarily complicated.

i'll quote myself:

What you're doing—trying to look at an individual choice and judge whether it's 'parallel'—is needlessly fraught.
Just compare.

* a critique ... a vision
BETTER.

* a critique ... his envisioning
WORSE.

Ok, Just compare the choices and choose the best of them.
Thanks:)

[tim]

Just like the instructions say.

[RonPurewal]

Ok, Just compare the choices and choose the best of them.
Thanks:)

you should just do that ^^ whenever you're judging ANYTHING that can be 'better' or 'worse' to varying degrees.

parallelism is a perfect example.
in certain sentences absolutely perfect parallelism is possible, but in others it isn't.
in the latter case, if you were a writer you would face the rather difficult job of figuring out how best to WRITE the sentence.
but, since you have answer choices, your task is not nearly so hard: you just have to choose the winner of the beauty contest. (moreover, in any problem to which parallelism is essential, the identity of the 'winner' and the 'loser(s)' should be quite obvious.)

--

on the other hand, if something really IS 'binary'—things that are either right or wrong, one or zero, black or white, lightbulb on or lightbulb off—THEN you judge the choices individually.
e.g.,
* subject-verb agreement
* overall sentence construction (= whether something is actually a sentence, vs. a run-on or fragment)
* pronoun-noun agreement
these things either work or don't work; there is no gradient of 'beauty'. thus these types of things—and ONLY these types of things—should be judged in individual choices.

[charmanineW924]

Hi, Ron . I rule out choice D and E directly because of the modifier“, critiquing”. I remember you said the “comma+ ing” can only modify the preceding clause rather than the noun before it. The “ing” should have one of the following relationship to that clause:
* immediate consequence
* simultaneous, but lower-priority, action
In this particular case, it cannot use “comma+ing”because it dose not modify the preceding clause.
Am I right? Can I rule out the d and e because of the only one reason?

[tim]

What makes you say that "critiquing" cannot modify the previous clause?

[RonPurewal]

well, if humphrey davy was actually 'critiquing' things IN his essay, the comma + __ing structure could work as required.

this is (or at least should be) a non-issue, though, since both D and E contain particularly flagrant non-parallelism.

[Gmat Pro]

A. a critique of all chemistry since Robert Boyle as well as a vision of a

How can 'since' <a person> be used, as it is in option (A)?

Ideally the word 'since' should only be used for a point in time from when something happened. E.g. since 1999, X happened..

That's why I eliminated (A)

Ron, please explain. Thanks in advance.

[tim]

Please read the thread. Jamie answered your question over four years ago!

[RichaChampion]

I understand that the option A 'a critique' modifies 'Essay on Heat and Light' and hence is the right option.

E. critiquing all the chemistry done since Robert Boyle as well as his own envisioning of new chemistry that Davy hoped to found.

I am confused with the explanation/reasoning given for E. In this option E, I see that critiquing & envisioning are parallel. But I see explanation in OG & other sources saying that Humphry Davy is critiquing even the new chemistry that Davy hoped to found. Can u please tell how is this explanation valid?

in choice (e), despite their appearances, "critiquing" and "envisioning" are NOT parallel. the former is an -ING modifier, while the latter is a gerund (noun).

you don't have to make this distinction, though -- just notice that the right-hand structure starts with "HIS ...envisioning", and notice that nothing on the other side is parallel to this construction.

I think envisioning can act as participial phrase.

Example:

As verbs:
Scholars are critiquing Hawking's latest journal.
Elon Musk is envisioning a new market for his Space X rockets.


As participial:
Scholars translated Nietzsche's The Antichrist, critiquing the philosophy present in it.
Steve patented his work, envisioning a potential future market.

Hi,

Will the option E be correct if it is changed to "critiquing all the chemistry done since Robert Boyle as well as envisioning".

This looks fine..

Tim sir can you please comment how could this be fine as ron sir has said above that "envisioning" is gerund.

There's really no point in drawing that distinction (abstract vs. concrete noun). All you need to know is the following:
• This kind of modifier can describe the preceding noun.
• It can also describe the entire preceding sentence/clause/action.
• If one of these assignments reflects the intended meaning (= agrees with common sense), then the modifier is fine.

I think Ron sir that this analysis needs a close inspection. I take notes from your analysis.

On some other post you have written this -

An appositive noun modifier, a type of modifier that NEVER appears in spoken language but that appears on the GMAT a lot. The reason is that, unlike relative pronouns such as 'which', these modifiers don't have to touch their referent.
For instance: The general tried to get his troops to retreat before being surrounded, a strategy that ultimately failed.
Exceptions - If you have an appositive modifier that's an abstract noun - such as "strategy", "figure", "statistic", "findings", "situation", "change", "difference", etc. - then such an appositive may be allowed to describe the entire situation described in the previous clause.
For instance, the example I gave above with "a strategy..."Also, for further examples, see #59 and #79 in the purple verbal supplement OG book.

So your this point is only true when it is an abstract noun: • It can also describe the entire preceding sentence/clause/action.

Hello,


Is 'his' in choice E ambiguous? Since we have 'his own', isn't 'his' referring to Davy? As in this example: "After the agreement surfaced, the commission dissolved itself."

I understand that in B, 'his' can refer to either Davy or Boyle.

Thanks.

The appearance of "Davy", directly afterward, actually suggests that "his" = Boyle's. So, this pronoun is pretty much wrong.

Remember not to sweat "pronoun ambiguity"; it has never been dispositive in an official problem. If you're taking the actual test and you think it's an issue, try to find the more concrete problem from which it's successfully distracting you!

Sir, I am unable to understand this part : directly afterward

[RonPurewal]

So your this point is only true when it is an abstract noun: • It can also describe the entire preceding sentence/clause/action.

yes.

Sir, I am unable to understand this part : directly afterward

think about when you would write the following:
...her car, which Sharon bought last week
like, try to make up an actual sentence containing those words, in that order.
if you do, then, "her" will almost certainly NOT refer to Sharon. (the sentence will describe someone else's car, which sharon bought last week.)

on the other hand, here...
...Sharon's car, which she bought last week
..."she" should be Sharon.

hopefully this makes sense.
if it doesn't, then, this whole concept honestly isn't worth worrying about further—you certainly won't NEED to use it to eliminate anything on the exam.
but, hopefully it's intuitively accessible from these examples.

[RonPurewal]

also, it's come to my attention that this is an official problem.
so, this thread is now closed.

**IF** this problem is in the FREE GMATPrep software, then, it belongs in that folder.
if it's from another GMAC source, then we can't host any further discussion of it here (and, technically, we shouldn't even have had the discussion we've already had thus far).

please respect the forum rules. thanks.