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Difficult Parallelism & Verb-ing Modifiers - GMATPrep

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by eastcoastrocks » Wed Jul 20, 2011 7:41 am
The hognose snake puts on an impressive bluff, hissing and rearing back, broadens the flesh behind its head the way a cobra does, feigning repeated strikes, but, having no dangerous fangs and no venom, eventually, if its pursuer is not cowed by the performance, will fall over and play dead.

(A) broadens the flesh behind its head the way a cobra does, feigning repeated strikes, but, having no dangerous fangs and no venom,
(B) broadens the flesh behind its head the way a cobra does and feigns repeated strikes, but with no dangerous fangs and no venom,
(C) broadening the flesh behind its head the way a cobra does and feigning repeated strikes, but it has no dangerous fangs and no venom, and
(D) broadening the flesh behind its head the way a cobra does and feigns repeated strikes, but with no dangerous fangs and no venom, and
(E) broadening the flesh behind its head the way a cobra does, feigning repeated strikes, but with no dangerous fangs and no venom, and

OA = C.
I know OA is official so it cannot be wrong. But I have my doubts and would appreciate if someone could help. Does the sentence not mean:

Snakes puts...by
1) Hissing and rearing back
2) Broadening....
3) feigning.. .
Since there are 3 elements in this list, shouldn't there be a comma between last two items. i.e. Broadening..... ,and feigning ?
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by e-GMAT » Wed Jul 20, 2011 8:37 am
Lets look at the list that you have identified. The first element of your list is "hissing and rearing back"...Do you notice how this element is of the form “verb-ing and verb-ing”. Now notice that this is in the non-underlined portion of the sentence. Now you move to the underlined portion of the sentence and you notice some more verb-ing modifiers. All these are basically explaining how the snake puts on his false show. Now first element of the list sets the stage for the next elements of the list. Thus, in reality the elements 2 and 3 as identified by you are part of element 2 itself. Thus, the list is

1: hissing and rearing back
2: broadening...and feigning...

Notice how both elements follow the same structure - verb-ing..and verb-ing...
And hence the punctuation is correct as is...i.e. no comma+and between broadening and feigning.
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by eastcoastrocks » Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:53 pm
Thanks e-GMAT for clarifying this. If you don't mind, I have another question. As you indicated, the list contains 2 elements. But why are these elements not connected using "and". Why are they connected using comma only?
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by e-GMAT » Wed Jul 20, 2011 1:12 pm
I can give answer to this in two ways:

First way: When you have such adverbs (modifying clauses), and you only have 2 such in the list, for the sake of flow of the sentence, you may omit "and". Notice again, this is an official sentence. So we need to accept this as the correct construction and make a note of it for future reference.

Second way: Lets forget for a minute the identified parallelism and lets consider the sentence in the following way:

Clause 1, mod 1, mod 2.
Where
clause 1 = the hognose snake puts up an impressive bluff
mod 1 = hissing and rearing
mod2 = broadening...and feigning...

Now you may consider mod 1 to modify the preceding clause - clause 1
And mod 2 to modify the preceding clause as well. But this preceding clause contains mod 1 as well. i.e. Clause 1, mod1.

So here are the two ways in which you can justify the punctuation used.

Make a note of this correct construction.
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