nickhar130 wrote:I'm still not understanding why spawned (past tense) is parellel to extending (present tense). Can someone elaborate for me please.
As someone has rightly mentioned, the issue here is that of
participles.
spawned is not used as a
past tense here. It is used as
past participle.
extending is used as
present participle. Past participles and present participle are both
adjective forms of the verb and are hence considered parallel.
If this sounds a lot of grammatical jargon, you would be able to identify with the following sentence:
The crumbled chair broken and ageing with each passing day, was nearing the end of its life.
broken (a Past Participle) and
ageing (a Present Participle) are both modifying (describing)
chair (which is a noun). Hence,
broken and
ageing are
adjective forms (since adjectives describe nouns). In this sentence, it is more clear that
broken is Past participle, since the
Past tense of
break is
broke while Past participle is
broken. And since Past participles and present participle are considered parallel structures, this sentence is correct.
Similarly, in the OG question you have posted,
spawned and
extending, both modify
fungus. The distinction is unfortunately not very evident, since both - the Past tense and Past participle of
spawn are
spawned.
Now, the next logical question would be as to why C is not correct and why (in this case)
extended is not parallel to
spawned.
If C were to be the right choice, the sentence would read:
Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus .....extended for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.
Do you see the issue in the sentence? Well, in this case
extended is used as a past tense
verb. Couple of issues with this usage:
1. Past participle (spawned) cannot be considered parallel to Past tense (extended)
2. This sentence is a
run-on sentence with the following two Independent clauses
not connect by a proper co-ordinating conjunction (comma is not a co-ordinating conjunction)
a. Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth
b. A giant fungus extended for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.
This is one of those good questions that requires a thorough understanding of principles of grammar.
