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The Frenchwoman

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The Frenchwoman

by awesomeusername » Thu Jan 29, 2009 6:50 pm
OG 11 #129

Joan of Arc, a young Frenchwoman who claimed to be divinely inspired, turned the tide of English victories in her country by liberating the city of Orleans and she persuaded Charles VII of France to claim his throne.

OG 11 states that the first verb is turned and the second verb is persuaded. Since "claimed" and "liberating" are also verbs, how do I know to ignore these? Is it because they are modifiers? What's an easy rule to know that I need to rule out these verbs?

I made the mistake of saying "Joan of Arc turned the tide by liberating Orleans and persuading Charles..."
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Re: The Frenchwoman

by El Cucu » Fri Jan 30, 2009 7:12 am
awesomeusername wrote:OG 11 #129

Joan of Arc, a young Frenchwoman who claimed to be divinely inspired, turned the tide of English victories in her country by liberating the city of Orleans and she persuaded Charles VII of France to claim his throne.

OG 11 states that the first verb is turned and the second verb is persuaded. Since "claimed" and "liberating" are also verbs, how do I know to ignore these? Is it because they are modifiers? What's an easy rule to know that I need to rule out these verbs?

I made the mistake of saying "Joan of Arc turned the tide by liberating Orleans and persuading Charles..."
The issue here is the meaning of the sentence. did she do two actions "turned + persuaded" or only one action with 2 effects (turned +liberating+persuading)
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by awesomeusername » Fri Jan 30, 2009 3:07 pm
I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean.
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by Karen » Fri Jan 30, 2009 6:46 pm
When you're trying to sort out parallelism, you need to think about meaning -- which ideas go together. Look at the sentence:

“Joan of Arc, a young Frenchwoman who claimed to be divinely inspired, turned the tide of English victories in her country by liberating the city of Orleans and she persuaded Charles VII of France to claim his throne.”

So how did she turn the tide of English victories? By liberating the city of Orleans. Was persuading Charles VII to claim his throne part of “turning the tide of English victories,” or was it another action that forms a pair with “liberated the city of Orleans”?

The meaning that makes the most sense is that she did two things:
1. she turned the tide of English victories [in other words, broke their winning streak and made things go the other way] by liberating the city of Orleans, and then
2. she persuaded Charles the VII to claim his throne.

It doesn’t make as much sense to say that part of how she broke the English winning streak was by persuading Charles VII to claim his throne, and so it shouldn’t be “persuading.”

The verb “claimed” is irrelevant, because there’s no way that that action forms part of a pair with any other action – the sentence isn’t saying “she claimed to be divinely inspired, turned the tide…, and persuaded…”

Instead, “claimed to be divinely inspired” is just modifying Joan of Arc, and so shouldn’t influence the forms of the later verbs.
Karen van Hoek, PhD
Verbal Specialist

Test Prep New York
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by awesomeusername » Tue Feb 03, 2009 3:10 pm
It is clear now, thanks! :)
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