In an effort to reduce their inventories

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kvcpk: Legendary Member; Posts: 1893; Joined: Sun May 30, 2010 11:48 pm; Thanked: 215 times; Followed by:7 members

In an effort to reduce their inventories

by kvcpk » Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:34 am

In an effort to reduce their inventories, Italian vintners
have cut prices; their wines have been priced to sell,
and they are.
(A) have been priced to sell, and they are
(B) are priced to sell, and they have
(C) are priced to sell, and they do
(D) are being priced to sell, and have
(E) had been priced to sell, and they have

Please explain the answer. Thank you!!

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:34 am

kvcpk: Legendary Member; Posts: 1893; Joined: Sun May 30, 2010 11:48 pm; Thanked: 215 times; Followed by:7 members

by kvcpk » Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:36 am

My concern here is that "Italian vintners have cut prices;" represents past tense. and we are trying to establish an other statement which is also in past, at the same time. So the dependent clause should be in past tense.

Why are we moving to present tense here?

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papgust: Community Manager; Posts: 1537; Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2009 6:10 pm; Thanked: 653 times; Followed by:252 members

by papgust » Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:39 am

Please underline the sentence, so that it would be easy for members to respond. Thanks!

IMO C

Firstly, D and E are illogical w.r.t tenses used. Down to A,B and C.

"Their wines .. " is a clause and should not be a run-on sentence. All sentences except C do not finish the clause properly. You cannot abruptly end sentences with verbs such as "have", "are"..

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kvcpk: Legendary Member; Posts: 1893; Joined: Sun May 30, 2010 11:48 pm; Thanked: 215 times; Followed by:7 members

by kvcpk » Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:59 am

sorry.. forgot to do that.. Will not repeat..

Coming to the question, couple of queries:

1)Why D and E fail in tenses?
2) "I am in the same class as you are" - is this sentence wrong?

Last query:

"Italian vintners have cut prices;" represents past tense. and we are trying to establish an other statement which is also in past, at the same time. So the dependent clause should be in past tense.

Isnt this right?

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papgust: Community Manager; Posts: 1537; Joined: Mon Aug 10, 2009 6:10 pm; Thanked: 653 times; Followed by:252 members

by papgust » Wed Jun 16, 2010 2:02 am

kvcpk wrote:sorry.. forgot to do that.. Will not repeat..

Coming to the question, couple of queries:

1)Why D and E fail in tenses?
2) "I am in the same class as you are" - is this sentence wrong?

Last query:

"Italian vintners have cut prices;" represents past tense. and we are trying to establish an other statement which is also in past, at the same time. So the dependent clause should be in past tense.

Isnt this right?

Hi,

Let me explain in detail. We will just concentrate on the second clause that starts with "Their wines...".

"Their wines have been priced to sell, and they do [sell]. " -- This is the right version of the sentence. Parallelism lies on either sides of "and". you say that "Their wines have been priced to sell" on first note. On second, you actually mean to say that "Their wines do sell". When you combine these 2 notes, you get:

"Their wines have been priced to sell and Their wines do sell".

You have 2 repeating words -- "Their wines" and "sell". So, you replace with a pronoun "they" and eliminate second "sell" as it is understandable that it is meant to sell.

Try replacing "are" and "have" in place of "do" in:
"Their wines have been priced to sell and Their wines do sell".

It will not make sense.

kvcpk wrote:"Italian vintners have cut prices;" represents past tense. and we are trying to establish an other statement which is also in past, at the same time. So the dependent clause should be in past tense.

Isnt this right?

No, "Italian vintners have cut prices;" represents present tense. Not past tense.
However, "Italian vintners had cut prices;" represents past tense.

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kvcpk: Legendary Member; Posts: 1893; Joined: Sun May 30, 2010 11:48 pm; Thanked: 215 times; Followed by:7 members

by kvcpk » Wed Jun 16, 2010 2:14 am

Thanks Papgust for your prompt response. But I am missing something here..

Let me put it more clearly:

Main Clause: "In an effort to reduce their inventories, Italian vintners have cut prices; "

Dependent Clause: " their wines have been priced to sell, and they are. "

Now main clause is in present perfect tense.
The dependent clause is trying to show an action that happened at the same time.
So it should be in Present perfect tense.

Please let me know if i am correct in my analysis so far..

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hardik.jadeja: Legendary Member; Posts: 535; Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2007 2:12 am; Thanked: 87 times; Followed by:5 members; GMAT Score:730

by hardik.jadeja » Wed Jun 16, 2010 4:39 am

kvcpk wrote: Main Clause: "In an effort to reduce their inventories, Italian vintners have cut prices; "

Dependent Clause: " their wines have been priced to sell, and they are. "

Now main clause is in present perfect tense.
The dependent clause is trying to show an action that happened at the same time.
So it should be in Present perfect tense.

Please let me know if i am correct in my analysis so far..

their wines have been priced to sell, and they are - This isnt a dependent clause. When two clauses are separated by ";", both clauses can stand on their own. you can't separate dependent clause from independent clause using ";", you must use ",".

And since both these clauses are independent clauses, the kind of parallelism you are expecting is not required. Instead, we need parallelism "X and Y" in the second clause alone.

Hope that helps..

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kvcpk: Legendary Member; Posts: 1893; Joined: Sun May 30, 2010 11:48 pm; Thanked: 215 times; Followed by:7 members

by kvcpk » Wed Jun 16, 2010 7:08 am

Thanks Hardik for making it clear..

Thanks to Papgust too..

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paes: Legendary Member; Posts: 995; Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2010 11:56 pm; Thanked: 31 times; Followed by:1 members

by paes » Wed Jun 16, 2010 6:47 pm

Please clarify following doubt also

in C:

Their wines have been priced to sell and Their wines do [ sell].

Why we are expecting [ sell ] after do.

By parallelism, we can think it as :

"Their wines have been priced to sell and Their wines <do/are/have> [ have been priced to sell ]

I am unable to understand the meaning of the sentence and the way parallelisms is implemented in C.

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hardik.jadeja: Legendary Member; Posts: 535; Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2007 2:12 am; Thanked: 87 times; Followed by:5 members; GMAT Score:730

by hardik.jadeja » Wed Jun 16, 2010 7:03 pm

paes wrote:Please clarify following doubt also

in C:

Their wines have been priced to sell and Their wines do [ sell].

Option C is
their wines are priced to sell, and they do.

paes wrote: Why we are expecting [ sell ] after do.

they do - do what?? they do sell. It an elliptical construction.

paes wrote: By parallelism, we can think it as :

"Their wines have been priced to sell and Their wines <do/are/have> [ have been priced to sell ]

I am unable to understand the meaning of the sentence and the way parallelisms is implemented in C.

Option C is
their wines are priced to sell, and they do.

Parallelism required here is "X and Y"

X - their wines are priced to sell
Y - they do [sell]

If you notice, both X and Y are clauses and they both are in present tense. So they are parallel.

Hope that helps..

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mohit11: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 293; Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2010 9:08 am; Location: India; Thanked: 36 times; Followed by:5 members; GMAT Score:730

by mohit11 » Thu Jun 17, 2010 12:47 am

kvcpk wrote:My concern here is that "Italian vintners have cut prices;" represents past tense. and we are trying to establish an other statement which is also in past, at the same time. So the dependent clause should be in past tense.

Why are we moving to present tense here?

usage of "have" in the non underlined part of the sentence indicates the usage of Present Perfect Tense. i.e an event started in the past and continues in the future.

The two events in questions are

Price Cuts by Wine Makers and the fact that wines do well.

As per the rules, the earlier event should have "have + past participle" construction.

Answer C