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passive voice in SC

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passive voice in SC

by amar66 » Mon May 16, 2011 8:45 pm
Q.Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier's pension, joined the continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

a)22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become
b)22, was injured three times, while being discharged in 1783 because she had become
c)22 and was injured three times, and discharged in 1783, being
d)22, injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she was
e)22, having been injured three times and discharged in 1783, being

Source:OG-12(36).Why Option A is correct? Its solution says something about historical sequence, chronological flow etc,etc... but doesn't tell about the use of passive voice. Also please throw light on the use of past perfect tense in the last clause.
Last edited by amar66 on Tue May 17, 2011 4:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by HSPA » Mon May 16, 2011 9:36 pm
Let me do a quick run

B) changes meaning... it says she got injury while getting discharged..
C) Being
D) No parallel (joined || injured) ~|| was discharged
E) Being

Voila: A
First take: 640 (50M, 27V) - RC needs 300% improvement
Second take: coming soon..
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by bubbliiiiiiii » Tue May 17, 2011 12:54 am
Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier's pension, joined the continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

Sentence structure
Modifiers, Subject, first verb occurence
about historical sequence
The sentence gives three events in a sequence.
1. joined the continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22
2. was injured three times
3. was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.
use of passive voice
I couldnot find passive voice, could you please point out which part of the sentence is passive?
Also please throw light on the use of past perfect tense in the last clause
As we have a series of events presented here in past tense using 'was' which are as follows,

1. was discharged in 1783
2. she had become too ill to serve

we need to differentiate the order of occurence of events (1) and (2) above,
signifying that she became ill first and then was discharged in 1783.

Thus, we need use past perfect tense 'had' here.

Please correct incase I am wrong.
Regards,

Pranay
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by amar66 » Tue May 17, 2011 4:49 am
was discharged is passive voice not past tense. Still my query is open...why option A has was injured & was discharged with had? Why passive voice is necessary here while best practice is to avoid passive voice as much as possible.
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by sameerballani » Tue May 17, 2011 6:56 am
Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier's pension, joined the continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

As far the use of had is concerned, I feel its because of different time.
She WAS discharged in 1783 because she HAD BECOME too ill to serve.
There is no doubt that she was discharged in 1783 but the fact is that she Actually became ill not at the time of discharge but actually before that. so I feel time of actually being ill is earlier than than the past time of being discharged ie.1783. Therefore for discharge we use past tense and for ill to serve we use Past perfect tense.

Expert, Please correct me if i am wrong.
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by amar66 » Tue May 17, 2011 8:45 am
Experts..!!! your help is required here. Thanks.
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by bubbliiiiiiii » Thu May 19, 2011 12:46 am
amar66 wrote:was discharged is passive voice not past tense. Still my query is open...why option A has was injured & was discharged with had? Why passive voice is necessary here while best practice is to avoid passive voice as much as possible.
Lets get back to sentence again,

Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff,
Deborah Sampson
, the first woman to draw a soldier's pension,
joined the continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22,
was injured three times,
and
was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

the text marked in blue suggests a list.

Since these are in lists and all point to a common subject i.e., Deborah Sampson, all itmes in list have to be valid sentences when they are written individually as follows,

Deborah Sampson joined the continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22

Deborah Sampson was injured three times

Deborah Sampson was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

Here, all the three sentences written above are all ICs i.e., each has a subject and a verb. Thues, the word was is necessary.

Coming to your version, without was,

Deborah Sampson joined the continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22

Deborah Sampson injured three times

Deborah Sampson discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

Here, though sentence 1 acts as an IC, sentences 2 and 3 donot because of a missing verb. Indeed, sentences 2 and 3 are fragments.

Now, the immediate question that I got was, Can't we have fragements in a list. Answer is we can as far as parallelism is maintained among all items in list.

Coming back to this qyestion, since the first part (non-underlined) begins with a verb all other items in a list should also begin with a verb to maintain parallelism.

Hope it helps.

Please let me know incase of any concerns.
Regards,

Pranay
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by amar66 » Sat May 21, 2011 6:40 pm
Thanks a lot Bubblii...
Deborah Sampson was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.
How can we use active("had become") & passive("was discharged") voice in same sentence??? Pls explain this construction.


Also I have 2 doubts regarding this SC question. I have faced same issues while solving other problems having similar constructions.(passive voice in question) so want to understand the concept.

1)...."joined"...."was injured"...."was discharged"..."had become".....

Here some verbs are active whereas some are passive. How parallelism is being maintained here????

2)Why A uses ".....and was discharged in 1783 because she had become"?

If we use "joined the Continental Army in 1782" past tense, how can we use past perfect tense in 1783?How can we use past perfect for later point of time??

Thanks in advance.
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by bubbliiiiiiii » Sat May 21, 2011 10:51 pm
Here some verbs are active whereas some are passive. How parallelism is being maintained here????
Parallelism can be maintained between active voice and passive voice.

For instance, if X and Y are two items that require parallelism, it is fine to have X in active voice and Y in passive voice.
If we use "joined the Continental Army in 1782" past tense, how can we use past perfect tense in 1783?How can we use past perfect for later point of time??
How can we use active("had become") & passive("was discharged") voice in same sentence??? Pls explain this construction.
The sentence gives three events that happened from certain point (1782) to certain other point (1783). The three items, marked in blue in earlier post, are all parallel to each other. Moreover, the third event happened in 1783 and the third event only contains the past perfect construction.

I mentioned this because I got an impression from your questions that you are considering the past perfect tense (had become) to be applicable to all the three events which is not the case. The past perfect tense is only applicable to third event.

joined the continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22,
was injured three times,
and
was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

Hope it sounds sensible.

Let me know incase of any concerns.
Regards,

Pranay
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by Jim@Grockit » Sun May 22, 2011 5:50 pm
bubbliiiiiiii wrote:
Here some verbs are active whereas some are passive. How parallelism is being maintained here????
Parallelism can be maintained between active voice and passive voice.

For instance, if X and Y are two items that require parallelism, it is fine to have X in active voice and Y in passive voice.
It might be my imagination, but it seems as though you are getting stronger every week with your explanations, Pranay. I only quoted the one part, but your explanation of the three verbs was also very good.

There are instances of the passive voice in the sentence (was injured, was discharged; active forms would have been injured and discharged); parallelism is a harsh mistress, but not so strict that you can't have active and passive in the same sentence.
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by bubbliiiiiiii » Sun May 22, 2011 9:22 pm
Thanks sir for your appreciation.

I am still trying to improve my knowledge and reasoning power while answering questions in GMAT.
Regards,

Pranay
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by lunarpower » Tue May 24, 2011 5:21 am
amar66 wrote:Here some verbs are active whereas some are passive. How parallelism is being maintained here????
active vs. passive voice is irrelevant to parallelism.

active vs. passive voice is completely an issue of MEANING -- it has nothing to do with grammar.
i posted an explanation here:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/companies-in ... tml#367644

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once you've read that:
she joined the army herself -- this was her own decision. therefore, active voice.
she was injured *by other people* -- so, passive voice.
she was discharged *by other people* (i.e., her superior officers) -- so, passive voice.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by amar66 » Tue May 24, 2011 11:23 pm
Thank you very much Ron. It clarifies my doubt. This is what I was looking for.
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