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Mediterranean is noun or adjective

by gmatrant » Mon Oct 17, 2011 1:12 pm
33. Carbon-14 dating reveals that the megalithic monuments in Brittany are nearly 2，000 years as old as any of their supposed Mediterranean predecessors
(A) as old as any of their supposed
(B) older than any of their supposed
(C) as old as their supposed
(D) older than any of their supposedly
(E) as old as their supposedly

Stuck between B and D as I thought both adverb or adjective is right depending on the context .
But OG says D is wrong since Mediterranean predecessors is a noun, but I can consider predecessors as a noun and Mediterranean as an adjective which modifies predecessors, so in such a case "supposedly" an adverb can modify a adjective "Mediterranean", why is (Choice D) wrong?

Ans B
Last edited by gmatrant on Mon Oct 17, 2011 1:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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by GmatKiss » Mon Oct 17, 2011 1:16 pm
Please underline the part of the problem!
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Mon Oct 17, 2011 3:07 pm
Hey guys,

A couple notes on this one;

-I think this is from OG 10, so it's a pretty old question, and the English language subtlety might be out of scope of what you'd currently see today.

-I wouldn't try to understand this one necessarily from an adjective-noun-adverb standpoint as much as from a meaning standpoint, and if you think of it the latter way you can still learn the important take away from this one.

"Supposed" is kind of an accusatory word - it means that the quality being discussed is suspect...it's not necessarily what you say it is. For example:

I spent a lot of money on this supposedly free trip. (The trip wasn't really "free")

It didn't take a real detective to solve this supposed mystery. (The "mystery" was actually pretty obvious)

"Supposed" or "Supposedly" calls something into question. And if we apply that to this sentence, we're looking at two possibilities. Either:

1) The fact that these monuments are really "PREdecessors" ("pre" means before, so the suspect part is that we don't think they actually came beforehand)

or

2) The fact that they are really Mediterranean

I think if you look at the intent of the sentence, we're calling the timeline, and not the location, into question. We're saying that the Brittany monuments are actually older, so the "supposed predecessors" aren't what others have claimed.


So that leads to "supposed" as an adjective to modify "predecessors". "Supposedly" would modify "Mediterranean", and that's just not logical given that the entire sentence is about the age, not the location.
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by EducationAisle » Mon Oct 17, 2011 9:49 pm
Well, most probably, the reason OG says "Mediterranean predecessors" is a noun, is because "supposed" is an "Adjective" (basically "supposed" is a "participle", and participles are Adjectives). Once you are convinced that "supposed" is an "Adjective", it doesn't really matter (in the context of this sentence) whether you think "supposed" modifies "Mediterranean predecessors" or "predecessors". The point is that "supposed" will not modify "Mediterranean". Meaning-wise, the fact that predecessors were "Mediterranean" is not being questioned.

"supposedly", on the other hand, is an Adverb, which modifies an Adjective ("Mediterranean"), which modifies a noun ("predecessors").

All this apart, a couple of things:

1. If you just realize that "suppose" and "supposedly" are "different in meaning", that really is enough, because that being the case, you would almost always go with the "original meaning" of the sentence (in this case "supposed"). I really doubt that GMAT would have "supposed" in the original sentence and the correct answer uses "supposedly" (or vice-versa)

2. With GMAT increasingly leaning for "practical and behavioral" English, questions like these might have just found themselves out of favor.
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by gmatrant » Mon Oct 17, 2011 10:29 pm
Thanks Brian and EducationAisle.

EducationAisle: Going by your analysis of this question I guess this question does fit into the 'practical and behavioral question type'. Especially with the analysis that both of you have provided the question doesn't refer to any grammar rules.
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by EducationAisle » Mon Oct 17, 2011 11:32 pm
Sure, though I think this question would be a bit too pedantic now, for GMAT's taste.
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by prodizy » Tue Oct 18, 2011 5:59 am
Hi Ashish,

I thought participles can function as adverbs too. No?
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by prodizy » Tue Oct 18, 2011 6:01 am
OK. Got it. Past participle can't be an Adverb. where as present participle can be either Adverb or Adjective.
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Tue Oct 18, 2011 8:25 am
you would almost always go with the "original meaning" of the sentence (in this case "supposed"). I really doubt that GMAT would have "supposed" in the original sentence and the correct answer uses "supposedly" (or vice-versa)
Why do you say that? Has GMAC ever said that it wouldn't test that? I'd argue that the GMAT **should** test that. A major flaw in business thinking is that of confirmation bias - when people expect one conclusion and therefore find ways to view the data to confirm what they expected. So I'd argue that for a business school entrance exam that tests/rewards critical thinking, it behooves the authors of the test, at least on occasion, to trap people by offering an illogical initial meaning and rewarding those who don't succumb to confirmation bias.

GMAC **has** explicitly said that it tests logical meaning, but there's nothing official to state that the original meaning has any extra value. Logically thinking, that original meaning shouldn't take any precedent. Yet on so many threads/blog-posts here I see people talk about "the original meaning". I think that's something we as "experts" need to help people get away from.
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by EducationAisle » Tue Oct 18, 2011 8:57 am
Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:...for a business school entrance exam that tests/rewards critical thinking, it behooves the authors of the test, at least on occasion, to trap people by offering an illogical initial meaning and rewarding those who don't succumb to confirmation bias...
Sure Brian! And it doesn't really require us to be "experts" to know that many a times, when the original meaning or the sentence is absurd, the correct answer choice fixes it. In fact, with dangling modifiers, that is almost always the case.

However, if you read my post again, my observation was specifically with respect to the "supposed" Vs "supposedly" construction (for example, "supposed American ancestor" and "supposedly American ancestor" would both be logical, as would most other usages of this type). That being the case, changing from the original "supposed" to "supposedly" in an answer choice (or vice versa) would amount to changing the meaning, and that is not allowed, unless the original sentence had an absurd meaning.
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by prodizy » Tue Oct 18, 2011 9:07 am
Hey Ashish,

The original sentence need not have absurd meaning for us to discard its meaning; it could just have a grammatical issue. The simple thing would be to assume that there's nothing special with the underlined portion of the original sentence. Isn't it?
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Tue Oct 18, 2011 10:26 am
Hey Ashish,

I hear you - and hopefully I wasn't jumping down your throat. I just hope that we're all really careful about perpetuating that "protect the original meaning" mantra that's just as arbitrary and possibly damaging as "the first 10 questions count more" and "being is always wrong". In the SC forum here I just see a ton of bad advice and every once in a while hit a breaking point. I see students reciting back these incorrect strategies and just hope we can hold ourselves to a higher standard...I feel awful for those who put so much time and effort into memorizing as gospel so many of these partial-truths and inefficient pieces of "strategy".

Prodizy - you're dead on...there's nothing special with the underlined portion. Each of the 5 answer choices is as potentially-valid as the others.
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by EducationAisle » Tue Oct 18, 2011 9:45 pm
prodizy wrote:Hey Ashish,

The original sentence need not have absurd meaning for us to discard its meaning; it could just have a grammatical issue. The simple thing would be to assume that there's nothing special with the underlined portion of the original sentence. Isn't it?
I know that aspirants ponder over this grammar Vs meaning issue, but if you really look at it, this is often a moot point, and there is not a significant difference because correct grammar, after all, is an enabler to conveying the intended meaning in the best possible manner.

For example, let us look at the folloiwng sentence:

Rajendra's friend scored 710 on GMAT, which did not do justice to his friend's potential.

Since "which" has a tendancy to modify the nearest eligible word preceding it, "which" can modify "GMAT", and so, the above sentence can erroneously convey that "GMAT" did not do justice to the friend's potential.

One of the better ways of articulating this would be thru the use of "absolute" phrase:

Rajendra's friend scored 710 on GMAT, a score that did not do justice to his friend's potential.

Basically, the reason aspirants need to acquaint themselves with Grammar is because the correct use of grammar helps them frame the sentence most appropriately.
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by prodizy » Wed Oct 19, 2011 12:04 am
@ashish Ha ha ha. I like your sense of humor - taking real life examples and that too from my blog :)
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