SC:is descended or has descended ?

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron,

If I were to alter Choice B "that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving" to say "that has suggested that the elephant is descended from..."- For the lack of a better option, would that be correct?

"Has suggested" is still incorrect, for reasons already discussed in this thread.

[RonPurewal]

Since the thread is long, you can also read here:
post100122.html#p100122

Basically, "has suggested" implies that the evidence doesn't currently suggest this idea.

[JhanasC520]

Dear Ron and Tim,

Sorry to bring this post up again. I have read through this long post and have a small issue that I wish to confirm with you

My questions is :
IF Choice A writes like below, Is this sentence correct? I mean, by adding that after comma-and, "that its trunk"sentence can still parallel with the "that the elephant is.."?

Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and that its trunk originally evolved.

I understand that If there is no "that" in the second part, the sentence "its trunk originally evolved" might parallel with Australian embryologists.....


Thanks for your reply!

[RonPurewal]

This question has already been answered (in the affirmative) earlier in this thread. But, there's your answer again.

[ZHUOC614]

Hi Ron,
I have read through all the previous post and found your explanation really enlightening, but I am still confused about choice B. I understand that "a kind of snorkel" clearly must be something that evolved while the elephant's predecessor was still living in the sea. But I think that the snorkel itself evolved a long time ago does not mean that the trunk also evolved in the same time that the snorkel evolved. In my point, the trunk just evolved from the snorkel. So the trunk's evolution starting as a snorkel can be a component of the evolution of the elephant.(But this contradicts your view)

I know you are always right, but I am just really confused what is wrong in my reasoning. Would you please help me out?

Thanks in advance!

[RonPurewal]

The sentence describes ONLY the trunk's original evolution ("as a kind of snorkel"). No later phase of the trunk's evolution is addressed.

I know you are always right,

LOL.

[ZHUOC614]

Hello Ron again,

thanks a ton for your clarification!

After reading your post, I finally came to realize that what we are talking is about the evolution of its trunk as a snorkel, so at that time the trunk was a actually a snorkel. Since snorkel existed long time ago, the process must have taken place long time ago, too.

Am I right now? Thanks : )

[RonPurewal]

Hello Ron again,

thanks a ton for your clarification!

After reading your post, I finally came to realize that what we are talking is about the evolution of its trunk as a snorkel, so at that time the trunk was a actually a snorkel. Since snorkel existed long time ago, the process must have taken place long time ago, too.

Am I right now? Thanks : )

The point is that the whole "snorkel" thing was true BEFORE the aquatic animal evolved into an elephant.

The issue doesn't have anything directly to do with "long ago", or with the duration of any evolutionary process. (Even if the elephant's aquatic ancestor still existed in 1980, and all of the evolution took place over the last 35 years, the sentence would still work.)

[ZHUOC614]

Now I can understand it!

Thanks Ron so much!

[tim]

Glad to hear it!

[RonPurewal]

Remember—Step One of ANY sentence correction problem is "Figure out the exact intended meaning."

The easiest way to gauge whether you're doing Step One well enough is to see what happens when you have to make decisions involving meaning.
If you have to figure out the meaning in retrospect--AFTER noticing a split--then that's a failure of Step One.

In other words, when you encounter a split that depends on context, you should already be aware of the EXACT intended meaning of the relevant words. Meaning is not the kind of thing that you should have to "go back and figure out".

[RonPurewal]

Examples of what I'm talking about in the last post:

• If you encounter a pronoun in any answer choice, you should already know what it's meant to stand for. You should not have to go back to figure that out.

• If you encounter a modifier, you should alredy know what it's meant to describe. Shouldn't have to go back.

• If you see the second half of a parallel structure (e.g., "... and xxxx"), you should already know what the first half is. Shouldn't have to go back.

This might seem demanding, but it really isn't--it's just normal reading. I.e., not strange "academic" reading, but rather the kind of reading you'd do for pleasure.
If you were reading a book and came to a sentence with a description (= a "modifier"), then you would absolutely know what it was describing! (And if you didn't, you wouldn't keep reading until you'd thought it through.)

Step 1 is actually just like reading a book or magazine. Not "academic" at all.

[cherryj222]

PLESASE, HELP.

please note that this sort of entreaty, in all capital letters, will not make us answer posts sooner -- we answer all posts in order from oldest to newest.

in C, " aquatic animal with trunks..." is wrong because it should be that the elephan has trunk, not aquatic animal.

this is accurate.

in B, why " , its trunk originally involving..." is wrong.

i don't think the problem is with that phrase.
two other elements of that answer choice are problematic:
* "has suggested" --> this is the present perfect, which is used to look back on past events that have some sort of relation to the present situation. so, "has suggested" would signify that, at some point in the (probably recent) past, this evidence has suggested what is stated here -- but that it doesn't suggest those notions anymore.
* "descended" (without "is") --> if you mean to state an evolutionary relationship, you should use "is descended". "descended", used alone, signifies literal downward motion.

Hi ron. Thanks for your wonderful explanation!
Somehow, i still get stucked by the "has suggested" here. If the usage of "has suggest" means that this is not the case today, then why the problem #68 of og13 use "have yielded " in the correct answer?
Here is part of that correct sentence: A have yielded strong evidence that …

[RonPurewal]

"Yielded", like "given", refers to something that happened at the time of a discovery. Because it's still relevant to the present, we use "has ___ed" rather than the past tense.

To understand the distinction, ask yourself whether it would make sense to append a past timeframe onto each construction.

On Thursday, research yielded new knowledge about the growth of cancer cells.
This makes sense. When did the research yield this knowledge? On Thursday.

On Thursday, research suggested that ...
This would be nonsense, unless new findings (found between Thursday and today) refuted these suggestions.

[YingC357]

Hi Ron
in choice (B)
Can I say that because "its trunk" in a concrete noun, this Appositive Modifier can't modify the noun preceding comma ("an aquatic animal") ?
Thank you in advance

From a purely mechanical standpoint, the modifier in choice B is fine, as explained in Ilyana's post above.

However, the modifier doesn't make sense in context.
"...its trunk originally evolving..." would have to describe the previous action.
In other words, this evolution (of the trunk) would need to have been a component of the elephant's evolution from an aquatic animal.

That doesn't make sense, though. A "snorkel" is something that's only useful in water, so, the "snorkel" (= the predecessor of the trunk) must have been a part of the AQUATIC animal's anatomy. So, this modifier doesn't make sense.

The presentation in the correct answer (as 2 separate facts), on the other hand, works.