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SC-Present and Past participle

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SC-Present and Past participle

by pract » Sun Jul 12, 2015 5:13 am
The football team, tired after four hours of practice and wanted to reach home quickly, took a short cut.
A. tired after four hours of practice and wanted to reach home quickly, took a short cut.
B. tired after four hours of practice and wanting to reach home quickly, took a short cut.
C. tired after four hours of practice and because they wanted to reach home quickly, took a short cut.
D. tired after four hours of practice and wanting to reach home quickly, will take a short cut.
E. tiring after four hours of practice and wanting to reach home quickly, took a short cut.

Source :Aristotle SC Grail Question 29

I have marked A as an answer but correct answer is B. Reason mentioned : Parallelism .
My doubts
1)can past participle and present participle be in parallel
2) why option A is incorrect and option B is correct?
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by Jim@StratusPrep » Sun Jul 12, 2015 5:52 am
tired is an adjective here. The football team is tired.
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by pract » Mon Jul 13, 2015 9:57 am
Thanks for the input,still it is not clear why option B is correct.
could you please elaborate?
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by Sun Light » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:27 am
pract wrote:The football team, tired after four hours of practice and wanted to reach home quickly, took a short cut.
A. tired after four hours of practice and wanted to reach home quickly, took a short cut.
B. tired after four hours of practice and wanting to reach home quickly, took a short cut.
C. tired after four hours of practice and because they wanted to reach home quickly, took a short cut.
D. tired after four hours of practice and wanting to reach home quickly, will take a short cut.
E. tiring after four hours of practice and wanting to reach home quickly, took a short cut.

Source :Aristotle SC Grail Question 29

I have marked A as an answer but correct answer is B. Reason mentioned : Parallelism .
My doubts
1)can past participle and present participle be in parallel
2) why option A is incorrect and option B is correct?



Though i am not an expert, i will try to explain.

In the original sentence,"tired after four hours of practice and wanted to reach home quickly" is a noun modifier.

"And" is a parallel marker,therefore look at the right hand side of "and" in order to understand what exactly should be parallel.

It's a verb -> "wanted". Now look at the first word of the modifier, the first word is "tired", an adjective. verb || adjective is incorrect.

Choice B: "tired" ||"wanting" -> Adj || Adj.

Choice C: "tired after four hours of practice and because they wanted to reach home quickly"

Adj||Subordinate Clause -> Not Parallel. This is the poorest among all options.

Choice D: "tired after four hours of practice and wanting to reach home quickly, will take a short cut."

Notice: "the football team was tired" - "the football team was wanting to reach home quickly"
the modifiers with the subject tells us that the event already happened in the past. There is a tense disagreement between modifiers+subject and the main clause.

In short, Tired-past partciple.. whereas the main clause is simple future tense.. not ok.

Choice E:"tiring after four hours of practice and wanting to reach home quickly"
if you add the modifier to the subject with the help of a helping verb, you will notice that the modifier doesn't make sense.

"the football team was tiring" .... not ok

Choice B - best.
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by Jim@StratusPrep » Mon Jul 13, 2015 2:16 pm
Yup. Parallel is a structural thing. You need the same form of speech. adj vs. adj., verb vs. verb, tense vs. tense, etc...
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by akash singhal » Mon Jul 13, 2015 9:23 pm
B is indeed the right answer.

whenever you are in doubt of choosing which form of adjective you should select "past participle" or "present participle" use the method given below.

Use was/were before the adj and form a sentence.

The football team was tired.
The football team was tiring.

Former statement makes sense while later doesn't so, Tired is the right adj here.

Similarly,
The football team was wanted to.......
The football team was wanting to.......
Here, the former doesn't makes sense so later is correct. Wanting is the right adj.

And yes present and past participle can be parallel.

Parallel structure goes as:-
Adjective || Present Participle || Past Participle

So, Here B uses perfect parallelism and right tense form "took" so is correct.

If any queries ask.

Fell free to argue
Thank you
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by Sun Light » Tue Jul 14, 2015 1:03 am
akash singhal wrote:B is indeed the right answer.

whenever you are in doubt of choosing which form of adjective you should select "past participle" or "present participle" use the method given below.

Use was/were before the adj and form a sentence.

The football team was tired.
The football team was tiring.

Former statement makes sense while later doesn't so, Tired is the right adj here.

Similarly,
The football team was wanted to.......
The football team was wanting to.......
Here, the former doesn't makes sense so later is correct. Wanting is the right adj.

And yes present and past participle can be parallel.

Parallel structure goes as:-
Adjective || Present Participle || Past Participle

So, Here B uses perfect parallelism and right tense form "took" so is correct.

If any queries ask.

Fell free to argue
Thank you

I think the explanation is sufficient to crack the question.

Nice problem, the key takeaway is the approach by which one can observe whether a noun modifier is making sense with the noun.
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