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Not convinced with the 'alleged' OA

by Pdgmat2010 » Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:14 am
In addition to her work on the Miocene homicide fosiil record, Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting East African 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
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by Pdgmat2010 » Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:18 am
(A) Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting contributed to something by x and y ( with is incorrect)
(B) Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and by painstakingly documenting contributed to something by noun not parallel to verb
(C) Leakey was a contributor to archaelogy with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of both nouns, , Leakey is the antecedent for the pronoun 'her'
(D) Leakey's contributions to archaelogy include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of possessive noun Leakley's is incorrect as the pronoun 'her' should have a clear subject immediately following the modifier
(E) Leakey's contributions to archaelogy include her discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of possessive noun Leakley's is incorrect
my answer: C
OA D
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by gig92 » Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:40 am
The sentence highlights the work done by her, the subject and her contributions. The subject is not a direct contributor at present. The subclause uses parallel structures to balance the whole sentence
I agree that it's a confusing sentence but after some reflection the intent of author is clear. Hence the OA: D
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by rockeyb » Tue Aug 10, 2010 6:11 am
This thread should explain things : https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/in- ... -t499.html


Looks like not such a good question with two possible answers .
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by lunarpower » Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:44 am
probably the easiest criterion with which to start your criticism of these choices is PARALLELISM -- which, non-coincidentally, is the single most important error on sentence correction. if you did not think to use parallelism on this problem, you should review parallelism until you have a better instinct to use it.

in this case, the two concepts that are parallel are
* discovering / discovery (of hominid activity)
* documenting / documentation (of east african paintings)

these must appear in parallel form. so if you have "discovering" then you must have "documenting"; if you have "discovery of..." then you should have "documentation of...".
Pdgmat2010 wrote:(A) Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting
not parallel.

--
(B) Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and by painstakingly documenting
not parallel.

--
(C) Leakey was a contributor to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of

parallel.

--
(D) Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of
parallel.

--
(E) Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of
not parallel.

--

only c/d survive the parallelism criterion.
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by lunarpower » Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:49 am
regarding this:
Pdgmat2010 wrote:(C) Leakey was a contributor to archaelogy with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of both nouns, , Leakey is the antecedent for the pronoun 'her'
(D) Leakey's contributions to archaelogy include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of possessive noun Leakley's is incorrect as the pronoun 'her' should have a clear subject immediately following the modifier
nope -- the possessive noun is not incorrect, since "her" is also a possessive pronoun.
(note that "her" is both an object pronoun and a possessive pronoun:
i called her --> object pronoun
i know her sister --> possessive pronoun)

it looks like you're using the "possessive poison" rule.
of note, if you use this "rule":
what is perhaps most interesting is that gmac itself is starting to distance itself from this "rule".
if you look at problem #86 in the FIRST edition verbal supplement (the purple book), the answer key declares, very explicitly, that the pronoun "grammatically ... CANNOT" refer to the possessive noun.
on the other hand, if you open your second edition verbal review (the blue one) to #81, you will find that the explanation has been completely revised -- completely removing all traces of these former bold claims and replacing them, eyes darting nervously around the room, with "grammatically its referent is somewhat unclear".
this is pretty clear evidence that even gmac doesn't believe in the sanctity of this rule anymore, although to date they have not written any problems that violate it.
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by lunarpower » Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:54 am
in order to distinguish between c/d, we can actually look at another instance of parallelism.

the sentence starts out with "In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record".
therefore, it follows that the subject of the following clause should be something that can legitimately be in addition to her work -- i.e., it should be something else that mary leakey did.

choice (c) (as well as choices a/b) violates this instance of parallelism by putting mary leakey herself in parallel with her work on the fossil record. that doesn't make sense.
choices d/e to maintain this aspect of parallelism by pairing leakey's work on the fossil record with her other contributions.

so, we can actually solve this entire problem with nothing but parallelism!

--

also, native speakers of english would probably recognize that "was a contributor to archaeology with her discovery..." is weird and awkward, but i don't think it's reasonable to expect non-native speakers to figure that out. (that sort of thing will certainly never be the only criterion for eliminating a wrong answer, in case you're worried.)
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by sindhu b » Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:57 am
isnt her discovery and painstaking supposed to be parallel...

u have mentioned discover and documentation... can you explain this
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by lunarpower » Wed Aug 11, 2010 3:54 am
sindhu b wrote:isnt her discovery and painstaking supposed to be parallel..
no.
what's the reasoning behind your claim that these should be parallel?

remember -- you can't make random words parallel; you should only use parallelism for IDEAS that are actually parallel to each other, i.e., two or more of the same type of action/idea/thing, presented in the same type of way and with the same priority.

in this case, "discover/discovery" is a specific contribution that mary leakey made to anthropology.
and "document/documentation" is is another specific contribution that mary leakey made to anthropology.
so those should be parallel.

--

incidentally, "discover/discovery" and "painstaking" also fail the test of pure grammar -- it's actually impossible to make those into a parallel construction in the first place: "discovery" is a noun / "discover" is a verb, but "painstaking" is an adjective. there is no way that these two things could be parallel, in any construction, anywhere -- they are totally different types of words.

you shouldn't have to think about grammar, though, to realize that these are not the parallel constructions in this problem; as above, you should just say "hey, 'discovery' and 'documentation' are two things that mary leakey did for the sake of anthropology."
that's the way you've got to start thinking about parallelism -- CONCEPTUAL as well as grammatical.
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by Pdgmat2010 » Wed Aug 11, 2010 9:29 am
lunarpower wrote:in order to distinguish between c/d, we can actually look at another instance of parallelism.

the sentence starts out with "In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record".
therefore, it follows that the subject of the following clause should be something that can legitimately be in addition to her work -- i.e., it should be something else that mary leakey did.

choice (c) (as well as choices a/b) violates this instance of parallelism by putting mary leakey herself in parallel with her work on the fossil record. that doesn't make sense.
choices d/e to maintain this aspect of parallelism by pairing leakey's work on the fossil record with her other contributions.

so, we can actually solve this entire problem with nothing but parallelism!

--
okay, so i got carried away with the possessive poison rule!
1. In addition to his work in <some field> , Jack's contributions to that field include x and y.
'his work' should be parallel to 'contributions' as the clause 'in addition to ' makes Jack's contributions a subject of the preceeding clause and not Jack himself.
In addition to violin, John can play the guitar. -> is this a completely wrong sentence?
should guitar (in some manner) follow 'in addition to violin'?


Ron, pls could you clarify.
OR
pls could you cite similar examples of the usage of 'in addition to'.

you already have been great in dissecting the entire problem so beautifully , pls could you help me more ( I know am pushing it now!)

Cheers,
Pd

also, native speakers of english would probably recognize that "was a contributor to archaeology with her discovery..." is weird and awkward, but i don't think it's reasonable to expect non-native speakers to figure that out. (that sort of thing will certainly never be the only criterion for eliminating a wrong answer, in case you're worried.)
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by lunarpower » Thu Aug 12, 2010 5:17 am
Pdgmat2010, it appears that you've made a mistake in posting above -- your post is just a reproduction of my post directly above it, with no comments, questions, or anything else of your own. did you mean to ask a question about my post?
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by skprocks » Thu Aug 12, 2010 6:04 am
lunarpower wrote:Pdgmat2010, it appears that you've made a mistake in posting above -- your post is just a reproduction of my post directly above it, with no comments, questions, or anything else of your own. did you mean to ask a question about my post?
I guess she did insert her comments,though they are not distinguishable ;

so, we can actually solve this entire problem with nothing but parallelism!

--
okay, so i got carried away with the possessive poison rule!
1. In addition to his work in <some field> , Jack's contributions to that field include x and y.
'his work' should be parallel to 'contributions' as the clause 'in addition to ' makes Jack's contributions a subject of the preceeding clause and not Jack himself.
In addition to violin, John can play the guitar. -> is this a completely wrong sentence?
should guitar (in some manner) follow 'in addition to violin'?


Ron, pls could you clarify.
OR
pls could you cite similar examples of the usage of 'in addition to'.
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by Pdgmat2010 » Thu Aug 12, 2010 6:56 am
oops.. sorry guys.. my bad!

Yes, i did insert my comments but forgot to close the HTML tag properly.

I am pasting below my queries


okay, so i got carried away with the possessive poison rule!
1. In addition to his work in <some field> , Jack's contributions to that field include x and y.
'his work' should be parallel to 'contributions' as the clause 'in addition to ' makes Jack's contributions a subject of the preceeding clause and not Jack himself.
In addition to violin, John can play the guitar. -> is this a wrong sentence?
should guitar (in some manner) follow 'in addition to violin'?

In addition to violin, guitar is another musical instrument that John can play. ( Sorry, could you make it sound better?)

Ron, pls could you clarify.
OR
pls could you cite similar examples of the usage of 'in addition to'.
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by lunarpower » Sat Aug 14, 2010 5:57 am
Pdgmat2010 wrote:In addition to violin, John can play the guitar. -> is this a wrong sentence?
should guitar (in some manner) follow 'in addition to violin'?
i'm not sure whether that sentence would qualify as strictly wrong, but it's certainly inferior to the following version:
john can play the guitar in addition to the violin.
see the difference --> the modifier "in addition to the violin" should modify "the guitar", so, logically speaking, it should be placed as close as reasonably possible to "the guitar".

in the example you've given, with that modifier out in front rather than next to "the guitar", the modifier is needlessly far away.
pls could you cite similar examples of the usage of 'in addition to'.
i don't know any others off the top of my head, but you may want to try site-specific searches. for instance, try typing
site:beatthegmat.com "in addition to"
into google, and checking out the relevant threads to see whether they contain anything helpful regarding this construction. (i'm not sure how much you -- or other readers -- know about site-specific search terms, but make sure that 1) there are NO spaces before or after the colon, and 2) your search term includes the quote marks exactly as indicated.
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