@patanjali: introductory prepositional modifiers are adverbial modifier i.e they modify verb and they agree with subject.
However, GMAC treats "in addition to" in a special way as is evidenced by following 2 GMATprep problems. Even mgmat (pg-257,mgmat sc 4th ed.) mentions that
"in addition to" when used at beginning of sentence can be used to modify any noun - subject/object/any other noun - in the sentence
1. In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, Mary
Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting East African cave paintings.
A. Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting
B. Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and by painstakingly documenting
C. Leakey was a contributor to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of
D. Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of
E. Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of
2. In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record,
Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology through her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and through her painstaking documentation of East African cave paintings.
A. Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology through her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and through her painstaking documentation of
B. Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting
C. Mary Leakey was a contributor to archaeology by discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of
D. Mary Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting
E. Mary Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of
OA:
1.
D
2.
A
Both of above problems and original problem in this thread can be solved on the basis of parallelism only. remember nouns can be categorized into 4 forms (pg-213,mgmat sc 4th ed.):
a) concrete noun: things, people, places, time period, events
e.g. rock, pen
b) action noun: nouns that imply action or are formed from verbs
e.g. nomination, growth, change
c) simple gerunds: noun when outside, verb when inside a phrase e.g.
tasting wine is awesome job
(noun when outside) & i am
tasting wine (verb when inside)
d) complex gerunds: noun anywhere in phrase. often preceded by a,an,the. object is placed into an OF-prepositional phrase
(the running of marathon) OR before the gerunds
(marathon running)
on the basis of above distinction,
work, discovery, documentation are action noun whereas discovering and documenting are gerunds
As per parallelism, there are 3 categories that cannot be mixed:
1) concrete noun
2) simple gerunds
3) action noun & complex gerund
[2 words of same category maintain better ||ism than those of different e.g. withdrawal and release >> withdrawal and the releasing of ]
Use above rule to find OA for all 3 question and everything will fall in place.
Hope this helps
