Sentence Correction

210. Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant
fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles spawned by a single fertilized
spore some 10,000 years ago and extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.
(A) extending
(B) extends
(C) extended
(D) it extended
(E) is extending

The problem with long sentences is that we tend to get confused about the structure by the time we are finished reading the sentence.

The key to understand this sentence is to isolate the sentence parts and verify if the structure is correct (parallelism in this case).

a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago and extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

Reading the parts separately : Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth,
a giant fungus spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago
AND
a giant fungus extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

The structure is parallel with two participles (spawned and extending).
The Answer is A

Try other options... extends/extended/it extended/is extending to see if they suit fine.

its wrong...

stubbornp wrote:its wrong...

I think the ans is A only.
Shahid has correctly explained it

IMO: D

spawned and extended should be parallel

Now for the reasoning mentioned in the above posts, you will need it before extended to make the sentence clear and parallel

stubbornp wrote:210. Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant
fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles spawned by a single fertilized
spore some 10,000 years ago and extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.
(A) extending
(B) extends
(C) extended
(D) it extended
(E) is extending

All these questions that you have posted are from OG.. what better explanation do you seek on this forum than what is already given in the OG? I would say get hold of the book and check the explanation.. they are really good..

There are always multiple ways of looking at a question, and sometimes a fresh perspective is always appreciated - that's why it doesn't matter if the question is in the OG or not.

a bit long and tricky,,,,

imo:E


OA??

eshahid wrote:The problem with long sentences is that we tend to get confused about the structure by the time we are finished reading the sentence.

The key to understand this sentence is to isolate the sentence parts and verify if the structure is correct (parallelism in this case).

a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago and extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

Reading the parts separately : Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth,
a giant fungus spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago
AND
a giant fungus extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

The structure is parallel with two participles (spawned and extending).
The Answer is A

Try other options... extends/extended/it extended/is extending to see if they suit fine.

Sorry guys for wrong post...oa A....Answer is correct as Eshahid explained..

I also think the first choice is correct.

This question, I would say, is damn confusing . I got it wrong twice , both when I was practicing and when I gave a second show, while reviewing the answers.

The explanation by eshahid sounds good , however that doesn't convince me why B is wrong.

First of all I am confused weather the question is testing the parallelism or verb forms.

Spawned - past participle , simple past tense
extending - Present participle and extends is for simple present tense.

OG explanation says that the reason for answer being A is Spawned is past participle and hence extending ,which is present participle, should be used. Parallelism.

As far as I understand parallelism means that the tense should also be maintained same.May be I am wrong.Can someone shed light on this !!!
Thats the reason why i am confused as in what this question is testing (parallelism or verb forms ).

Now assuming that parallelism is being tested b/w verbs in different forms , why cant we take "extended" as simple past and use "extends" (simple present).
With this the answer should be B.

"Fungus extends for more then 30 acres in soil"
whats wrong with this statement as it is stating a fact?

Expert opinion please !! As you can see this is one thing which is confusing me a lot javascript:emoticon(':roll:')


@dumb.doofus :- I personally think that sometimes OG has a very complicated way of explaining answers that a person who is weak in verbal would be left even more confused so sometimes forums help a lot.javascript:emoticon(':twisted:')

Maybe this will help:

Neither spawned nor extending is the main verb of the sentence. You should not look for both of these to be in the same tense.

It is best to think of these verbs as functioning to introduce modifiers, and those two modifiers should be parallel to each other.

If we think of this as I have suggested above, the two modifiers are

spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago

and

extending for more than 30 acres in the soil

.

How can you tell if two grammatical structures are parallel? Very frequently you can do this by ensuring that he parallel words share the same ending. However, there are numerous examples where that isn't enough.

I suggest you try to read the entire sentence with each grammatical structure alone in the sentence. So for this question we could consider the following.

Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago in the soil of a Michigan forest.

AND


Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

Now try to read the second sentence above with any of the other answer choices:

B.
Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles extends for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

Clearly the verb extends doesn't function as a modifier. This is easy to point out from both a grammatical point of view and a "what sounds right" point of view.

C.
Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles extended for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

Now the verb extended is also nonsensical.


D.
Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles it extended for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

The pronoun it is obviously unnecessary and unclear.
E.
Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles is extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

The verb is extending doesn't make much sense since we don't know what is extending.



I think it is useful to remember that parallelism is a form of compounding sentence constituents. You should always be able to break each of those constituents out of the sentence and consider the complete sentence with each constituent separately.

This is a useful way to get the answer whether you prefer an approach based on grammatical rules or an approach based on what sounds right.

I hope that is helpful.

gmatutor, u hav given really nice explanation but I am confused with OG's explanation:

OG: "Extended" means that fungus existed only in past when fungus is still alive. If "extending" remains the situation in present tense, then how following sentence can be correct which is again from OG.

For the members of seventeenth century, animal-hide shields with wooden frames were essential items, protecting warriors against enemy arrows.

Here "protecting" is used to describe a situation in past.

Please explain !!

vaibhav.iit2002 wrote:gmatutor, u hav given really nice explanation but I am confused with OG's explanation:

OG: "Extended" means that fungus existed only in past when fungus is still alive. If "extending" remains the situation in present tense, then how following sentence can be correct which is again from OG.

For the members of seventeenth century, animal-hide shields with wooden frames were essential items, protecting warriors against enemy arrows.

Here "protecting" is used to describe a situation in past.

Please explain !!

i believe it is the items that are protecting the warriors, not a situation in the past;

What is the source of the question?

Well it seems to be remixed version of the another one question...lol....structure is same but words are different
(i wish GMAT was like that...lol)

any way ,
i will go with A as even the reason given there was
"extending" means it is still true (i was not that its extension was true in the past and it is not extended now)
so i think its A...