A challenging SC

subhojit_dg · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 4:28 am Post subject: A challenging SC

Can someone help me crack this SC:-

18. A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another, beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.
(A) beating in unison and adopting
(B) they beat in unison while adopting
(C) beat in unison, and adopt
(D) beating in unison yet adopting
(E) even though they beat in unison and adopt

More often than not i fail to apply my grammar rules to these types of questions.Plz help.

lan0583 · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 6:53 am Post subject:

I believe the asnwer is E.

is that in the area of the heart, the cells adhere to one another even though they beat in unison and adopt specialized orientations exclusive of on another...

I can't explain it but just look at the flow of the sentence.

subhojit_dg · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 7:23 am Post subject:

Hey Thanks for your reply..

But the correct answer as per the book is D. I could not perceive this one as one where i can apply the rule of parellelism.Any thoughts?

800guy · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 9:09 am Post subject:

here's the parallelism:

adhere...beat...adopt

gmat_score · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 8:12 pm Post subject:

C.
Parallel grammer structure

800guy · Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 4:59 pm Post subject:

neeleshkhadse · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 12:00 pm Post subject:

The correct answer is D.

My Analysis:

Read the following part of the sentence carefully once again. It says, "beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another."

Yes, for once you should give a thought to parallelism, but here we see that the original sentence uses parallelism correctly. So there should be somthing else.

After reading the above sentence we can see that the cells display contrasting notions, that of beating in unisons and that of adopting orientations exclusive of one another. One would expect the cells to adopt the same orientations since they beat in unison, but they do not. Thus, the word connecting both these notions should convey the above meaning, which is done correctly by YET. Hence, the answer D.

800guy · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:43 pm Post subject:

dblazquez · Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 2:18 pm Post subject:

yeah the key is to express the potential controversy or paradox between unison vs. specialized using YET

good thread, everybody!

bensanderson · Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:39 pm Post subject:

neeleshkhadse is absolutely correct. Using the word "yet" allows the sentence to make more sense.

one more thought though. we can tell this is not a question that tests parallel verb tenses because the subject is in the singular "A peculiar feature..." If we were listing features or actions, then we would have to pick parallel verb tenses--adhere, beat, adopt. However, we are clued into the fact that we are looking for a single strange feature right from the start. So right from the start, we can elimnate B, C and E because they assume that there is an incorrect verb tense. A is confusing. D makes it make sense. Using "yet" connects the three different actions (adhering, beating and adopting) and makes them ONE feature.