voodoo_child wrote:New data from the United States Forest Service ecologists show that for every dollar spent on controlled small scale burning, forest thinning, and the training of fire management personnel, seven dollars are saved that would have been spent on extinguishing big fires
I am not questioning OA. How are Burning, Thinning and "the Training" parallel? I believe that "the training" is a complex Gerund, and "thining" and "Buring" are simple gerunds?
Thanks
You may be confused because "the training of fire" is in the form
article + ing gerund + preposition and the others do not.
The other part is a usage part - to understand how the -ing phrase is working in the particular sentence ( I mean the context of usage ).
Its true most of the time a noun is preceeded by an article and this is what makes the surrounding words recognizable but at times it dont. Trying to recognize the meaning( or how it is used )is more important. You can refer advance part of manhattan gmat SC for details.
a complex gerund - act as a noun
a simple gerund - act as a verb
running a marathon - simple gerund ( "running" is acting as a verb )
marathon running - complex gerund ( here its a noun )
Now lets apply this in this specific problem :
New data from the United States Forest Service ecologists show
that for every
dollar spent on controlled small scale burning, forest thinning, and the training of
fire management personnel, seven dollars are saved that would have been spent on extinguishing big fires
Now you can easily understand that all the three phrase are actually acting as a noun ( so all are compex gerund and hence parallel, it doesnt matter what are the surrounding words )
small scale burning,
forest thinning, and
the training of fire
that for every dollar spent on X, Y and Z ( the usage is as a noun ).
Hope this helps
