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1000SC Question No 309

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by samyak » Sun Apr 25, 2010 12:18 am
309. For some birds the sense of smell appears to play a role in navigation, since pigeons with surgically removed olfactory nerves were found to have increased difficulties in homing.
(A) were found to have increased difficulties
(B) have been found to have increased difficulty
(C) were found to have increasing difficulty
(D) had been found to have increased difficulties
(E) have been found to have increasing difficulties

Why B is a better choice than C?
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by akhpad » Sun Apr 25, 2010 2:37 am
"Since" signals me to use perfect or perfect continuous tense.

Here, past perfect does not fit.

So. B seems to be better
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by grockit_andrea » Sun Apr 25, 2010 5:09 am
Present perfect is the better tense here, because it implies that research is still ongoing, which makes sense in the context of what appears to be a scientific phenomenon that hasn't been fully explained. The word "since" here should not be considered an indicator of tense, though, because while it CAN refer to a time-frame, here it is instead used to mean "because." Both of those meanings are correct: https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/since. It's just a matter of determining how the word is being used in a particular sentence, which has a lot to do with where it's placed; here it is introducing evidence. Regardless, though, present perfect tense is a better choice than past.

There is a bigger issue, though, and that's increased/increasing. "Increasing" isn't a good choice here, because it indicates that the difficulty continues to increase, which we have no reason to believe is true. "Increased" is correct in this context, because it has the more commonly-used adverb implication that the difficulty is greater than normal, but not necessarily continually increasing.
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by FightWithGMAT » Mon Apr 26, 2010 7:19 am
Which is more correct here:
Difficulties or Difficulty?????
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by abhisheksamantasenior » Mon Nov 01, 2010 7:24 am
grockit_andrea wrote:Present perfect is the better tense here, because it implies that research is still ongoing, which makes sense in the context of what appears to be a scientific phenomenon that hasn't been fully explained. The word "since" here should not be considered an indicator of tense, though, because while it CAN refer to a time-frame, here it is instead used to mean "because." Both of those meanings are correct: https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/since. It's just a matter of determining how the word is being used in a particular sentence, which has a lot to do with where it's placed; here it is introducing evidence. Regardless, though, present perfect tense is a better choice than past.

There is a bigger issue, though, and that's increased/increasing. "Increasing" isn't a good choice here, because it indicates that the difficulty continues to increase, which we have no reason to believe is true. "Increased" is correct in this context, because it has the more commonly-used adverb implication that the difficulty is greater than normal, but not necessarily continually increasing.
Hi Andrea,

I have a question regarding the usage of increasing vs. increased.
I feel it should be 'to have increasing difficulty' in stead of 'to have increased difficulty'. 'to have increased' indicates that birds ,on their own, increased the difficulty, whereas 'increasing difficulty' indicates that the dfficulty was increasing, without the birds' having any control it.
Let us consider the example: He was thought to have built the house. So here the those birds did not increase their difficulty but the difficulty increased.
Am I missing sometihng here?

Regards,

Abhishek
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by e-GMAT » Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:39 pm
For some birds the sense of smell appears to play a role in navigation, since pigeons with surgically removed olfactory nerves were found to have increased difficulties in homing.

Hi Abhishek,

Great question!!

Your doubt brings to surface a very interesting aspect of usage of "have". The word "has/have" can be used in two different roles:

1: As a complete verb meaning "possess". - Children have many toys. Here "have" = "possess"
2: As a helping verb to form perfect tense with the main verb. - Children have played with their toys. Here "have" is used to form perfect tense with the main verb - played.

I will re-write the above two sentences in the same form as used in the sentence in question:

Children are known to have many toys (have = possess)
Children are known to have played with many toys (have = to form perfect tense)

From the above two sentences, the role played by have is very clear. There is no doubt in mind. Thus, we can determine the role of "has/have" from the meaning of the sentence.

So now lets understand the meaning of the original sentence to determine the role that "have" plays.

For some birds the sense of smell appears to play a role in navigation, since pigeons with surgically removed olfactory nerves were found to have increased difficulties in homing.

In this sentence, the author states a fact that for some birds sense of smell is used to play a role in navigation. He supports this fact by stating an observation of pigeons who did not have a sense of smell. These pigeons faced increased difficulties in homing.

Thus, in the context of this sentence - "have" = possess.
And as you yourself notes, in the context of this sentence, it does not make sense to say that pigeons themselves increased the difficulties in homing.

Thus, as you can see, "have" plays one of the two roles in this construction. If however, we use the expression "increasing difficulty", then it will change the intended meaning since as noted in the previous post, it will imply that difficulty is still increasing.

I hope this helps address your concern.

Regards,

Payal
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