Usage of the words "Although" and "Though" before a clause

[ParthJ26]

Hi, Sage! Hope you're doing well!

I am facing some trouble with the usage of the sub-ordinator "Although" and "Though" when they are used as modifiers before the main clause.

According to this post on the Magoosh blog (https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/participl ... -the-gmat/), the following sentence is completely wrong:

1. Although opposing slavery on philosophical grounds, Jeff owned a plantation with several hundred slaves.

I understand why it is wrong.

Although = sub-ordinator (introduces a dependent clause)

This sub-ordinate clause must have its own S-V pair and therefore, the correct sentence would be:

Although Jeff opposed slavery on philosophical grounds, he owned a plantation with several hundred slaves.

OG also supports the above view in that ALTHOUGH is a conjunction and should be followed by a finite clause with a subject, not by a participle.

A. So will the following sentences be wrong? Ron says they are not. https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... bt#p118342

1. Although exhausted, Rob continued to work.

2. Although in considerable debt already, Tom spent two thousand dollars on a new designer suit.

B. Will the following sentences from the OG also be wrong? I have spun the questions a bit to illustrate my point.

Q 723.

Although covering the entire planet, Earth's crust is neither seamless nor stationary, but rather fragmented into mobile semirigid plates.

Q 773.

Although named for the New Mexico Site where they were first discovered in 1932, Clovis points have been found all over North America.

Q719 - this is the OA.

Though called a sea, the landlocked Caspian is actually the largest lake on Earth.

Here, the sub-ordinator THOUGH is not followed by a full clause.

Q786.

Although appearing less appetising than most of their round and red supermarket cousins, heirloom tomatoes are more flavourful and thus in increasing demand.

Thanks in advance.

Parth Jain

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Good detective work! I would encourage you to stick to one resource in your prep. Finding areas of conflict between Manhattan Prep and Magoosh is not a useful way to spend your time. When it comes to trusting Ron or trusting Magoosh, I'd go for Ron almost every time. On this point, I think Magoosh are just plain wrong: although doesn't need a full subject-verb clause after it and the Caspian Sea shows that's what GMAT think too. For me, the simple rule is that although + -ing is not correct.

Notice how the Clovis points example doesn't actually hinge on that issue - there's a real meaning problem with that answer choice. I can see that you're the kind of person who likes to know the rules, but keep working on developing your understanding of the meaning of these sentences.

[HowardW442]

current student
@Ron
@sage
based on sage's answer, the explanation in navigator for OG2021 #829 appears to be outdated. I guess gmac has shifted its focus on the although + full clause requirement? unless the answer in the navi was meant to be understood in a different way, the subject verb pairing was just a mere observation?

I am fully aware of the original/intended meaning comes first, but being a non-native speaker, sometimes a hard and fast rule helps.
there are AC that are just too hard to diff based on meaning alone, especially those preposition modifier ones, example #864 OG 2021 ...issues for global managers...very subtle.
sometimes more than one issue could be found on the wrong ones, but time constraint is a pain for sure. almost no time to tackle if you decide to allocate your time on looking for meaning.

Howard

[Whit Garner]

current student
@Ron
@sage
based on sage's answer, the explanation in navigator for OG2021 #829 appears to be outdated. I guess gmac has shifted its focus on the although + full clause requirement? unless the answer in the navi was meant to be understood in a different way, the subject verb pairing was just a mere observation?

I am fully aware of the original/intended meaning comes first, but being a non-native speaker, sometimes a hard and fast rule helps.
there are AC that are just too hard to diff based on meaning alone, especially those preposition modifier ones, example #864 OG 2021 ...issues for global managers...very subtle.
sometimes more than one issue could be found on the wrong ones, but time constraint is a pain for sure. almost no time to tackle if you decide to allocate your time on looking for meaning.

Howard

Thank you for highlighting the nav explanation - I'm doing a bit of research to confirm whether the GMAT has a stance on starting a sentence with "although" but not as part of a dependent clause. Will report back soon!

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi! Weighing in on this complicated issue.

In the real world, there are multiple ways that you can use Although at the beginning of a sentence. On published official GMAT problems, they seem to stick to the usage that "Although" is used at the beginning of a dependent clause (ie, a set of words that contains a subject and a verb, but is NOT the main sentence or main subject and verb).

This is not the case with the word Though—there are published OG problems that use Though at the beginning and that do not introduce a full clause. (Caspian Sea—an old / retired OG problem—is one example.)

Below is a list of all problems in the current edition (2022) of the OG that have at least one answer choice beginning with the word Although. In every case in which Although is used in the correct answer, it is used to introduce a subordinate clause (ie, with subject and verb).
#828
#831
#839
#852: Official explanation for part of incorrect answer A: "To make the sentence grammatically coherent, the word sequence Although . . .brick needs to be a complete clause"
#865
#901: Official explanation for incorrect E: "The word although is a subordinating conjunction used only to introduce a subordinate clause, which is required to have its own verb."
#906
#916
#958
#961: Official explanation for incorrect B: "where discovered is missing a subject—the correct form is where they were first discovered." Note: This answer choice is a modifier describing the following subject, one of the usages that Ron says is correct—and he is absolutely correct on this in the real world. In fact, I would argue with the official explanation. I think that the real issue with the Although clause in this choice is that the actual contrast is illogical: Although named for [a certain site], Clovis points are spear points ... is not a contrast.
#974
#979
#993

The explanation for #901, in particular, appears to indicate that the GMAT still holds to the "classic" definition / usage of Although.

I don't believe that the GMAT would give us an incorrect Although choice that was 100% correct except that it used one of the two alternatives that Ron cited (an adjective or a modifier describing the following subject)—because, in the real world, those are perfectly acceptable. There will always be something else wrong. (The same is true for things like Oxford comma use—they'll always use the Oxford comma themselves, but they won't give you something without the Oxford comma that has to be marked wrong only for that reason.)

It also seems to be the case, at least to the point at which the OG2022 was published (a year ago) that they are holding *themselves* to the standard of using Although with a full dependent clause (ie, the classic usage/construction). And the wording of a few of the explanations seems to indicate that the test writers, again at least up until that point, considered this the only valid construction. So I would go with that unless/until they publish something that contradicts the evidence to date.