SC: Usage of Infinitive vs Gerund.

[vicksikand]

This is a GMAT Prep question and thus should be moved to the appropriate forum.

[tim]

William, the beauty of this question - and any verbal question - is that you don't need to know what specific terms mean unless they are defined in context. As long as you can recognize it as a noun, that will be sufficient to answer the question..

And because you asked for it:
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=scrub+jay
:)

[xiaonvhai123]

Hi, instructors:

In Manhattan SC guild, chapter 10 odds&ends, there is a session about "comma":

Do not use a comma before AND to separate two verbs that have the same subject. Either eliminate the comma or add a subject to the second verb, creating a second main clause.

EX:Earl walked to school, AND later ate his lunch (wrong)
Earl walked to school, AND he ate his lunch (correct)

However, in the correct answer, there is no subject in the second part, but there is a "comma+AND" structure.

Given the correct answer should be always correct, would you like to give an explanation on this point? thanks alot...really feel confused...

[Willy]

Hi, instructors:

In Manhattan SC guild, chapter 10 odds&ends, there is a session about "comma":

Do not use a comma before AND to separate two verbs that have the same subject. Either eliminate the comma or add a subject to the second verb, creating a second main clause.

EX:Earl walked to school, AND later ate his lunch (wrong)
Earl walked to school, AND he ate his lunch (correct)

However, in the correct answer, there is no subject in the second part, but there is a "comma+AND" structure.

Given the correct answer should be always correct, would you like to give an explanation on this point? thanks alot...really feel confused...

Okay let me try to explain a bit, I am not expert but I will give it a shot.

A scrub jay can remember when it cached a particular piece of food in a particular place, researchers have discovered, and tends not to bother recovering a perishable treat if stored long enough to have rotted.

Here in the above sentence the two commas (red bold) go together and sets of modifier (researchers have discovered) separate from the sentence. Hence, here the construction is not Comma + And as you have said, but sentence is saying 'scrub jay' can do to things as follows;

A scrub jay

can remember when it cached a particular piece of food in a particular place

And

tends not to bother recovering a perishable treat if stored long enough to have rotted.

You can think about parallelism at work in this sentence.

In the examples you have given above,

Earl walked to school, AND later ate his lunch (wrong)

is wrong because we are trying to connect two clauses, which are not independent, with Comma + And. Because this sentence is missing Subject in the second part.

Earl walked to school, AND he ate his lunch (correct)

is correct because now, we have added Subject in the second part.

You can also make this sentence correct by removing Comma, constructing it in the sense of parallelism. i.e. as follows;

Earl walked to school and later ate his lunch.

here 'walked' and 'ate' are parallel.

[xiaonvhai123]

Hi, instructors:

In Manhattan SC guild, chapter 10 odds&ends, there is a session about "comma":

Do not use a comma before AND to separate two verbs that have the same subject. Either eliminate the comma or add a subject to the second verb, creating a second main clause.

EX:Earl walked to school, AND later ate his lunch (wrong)
Earl walked to school, AND he ate his lunch (correct)

However, in the correct answer, there is no subject in the second part, but there is a "comma+AND" structure.

Given the correct answer should be always correct, would you like to give an explanation on this point? thanks alot...really feel confused...

Okay let me try to explain a bit, I am not expert but I will give it a shot.

A scrub jay can remember when it cached a particular piece of food in a particular place, researchers have discovered, and tends not to bother recovering a perishable treat if stored long enough to have rotted.

Here in the above sentence the two commas (red bold) go together and sets of modifier (researchers have discovered) separate from the sentence. Hence, here the construction is not Comma + And as you have said, but sentence is saying 'scrub jay' can do to things as follows;

A scrub jay

can remember when it cached a particular piece of food in a particular place

And

tends not to bother recovering a perishable treat if stored long enough to have rotted.

You can think about parallelism at work in this sentence.

In the examples you have given above,

Earl walked to school, AND later ate his lunch (wrong)

is wrong because we are trying to connect two clauses, which are not independent, with Comma + And. Because this sentence is missing Subject in the second part.

Earl walked to school, AND he ate his lunch (correct)

is correct because now, we have added Subject in the second part.

You can also make this sentence correct by removing Comma, constructing it in the sense of parallelism. i.e. as follows;

Earl walked to school and later ate his lunch.

here 'walked' and 'ate' are parallel.

Thanks a lot !Willy
Very clear. The comma belongs to the modifier:)

[jnelson0612]

Willy, thank you for helping! :-)

[zhuoyaopingzi]

Additionally, the pronoun it in choice E lacks an antecedent.

The correct answer is D

Can someone please tell why there is no antecedent to "it" in E. Isn't "it" refering to "scrub jay" ?

I am sorry to pop this thread, but I failed to get the answer why "it" in E lacks an antecedent after a amount of search.

thanks very much~~

[tim]

There is no reason to conclude that the "it" in E lacks an antecedent. I think Dan misspoke on this one. Ultimately though, I am highly suspicious of this problem because it doesn't look like a legit GMAT Prep question. Unless someone can post a screen shot we're going to have to shut down discussion on this one.

[gmatkiller_24]

Hi, Ron. I got some doubts about choice C and E.

how can we construe this part： treat it stored long enough to have rotted.

it seems to me that "it" refers to "a scrub jay"

so the whole part looks like the one below:

A scrub jay stored treat long enough to have rotted ( the meaning is weird to me )

is there something wrong with my analysis? Can you further shed more light on this issue? Thank you!

[RonPurewal]

you're right—if the subject is 'it' (= the bird), then both of those choices imply that the bird has 'rotted'! clearly that's a nonsense meaning.