Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians

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patanjali.purpose: Legendary Member; Posts: 784; Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:51 amFollowed by: 12 members; Thanked: 114 times

by patanjali.purpose » Fri Apr 06, 2012 3:34 am

Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals to people due to the sport's unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops among people in their common quest to conquer nature.

1) Is this sentence grammatically correct?

2) "the camaraderie" is this parallel with other nouns - can we dig them?

3) graceful and serene, violent and formidable - is there any 3rd element in this list of adjectives?

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Fri Apr 06, 2012 3:34 am

Bill@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 1248; Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2012 2:57 pmFollowed by: 192 members; Location: Everywhere; Thanked: 503 times; GMAT Score:780

by Bill@VeritasPrep » Fri Apr 06, 2012 7:19 am

Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals to people due to the sport's unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops among people in their common quest to conquer nature.

1) It's verbose, but I think it's okay. I'd use "because of" instead of "due to" though.

2) Yep, it's parallel. "unusual confluence...unpredictable backdrop...camaraderie." The presence of modifiers on the first two does not ruin the parallelism.

3) There is not a third element, but it's okay

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scholardream: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 83; Joined: Fri May 06, 2011 9:08 am; Thanked: 5 times; GMAT Score:610

by scholardream » Fri Apr 06, 2012 8:08 am

Hi Bill,
Do you think the sentence tests the use of parallel only? And can I only need to care about grammer structure rather than specific words light blue color?
As a non-native person, it's quiet hard for me to evaluate the correction of those long and structured nouns.
Thanks,

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Bill@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 1248; Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2012 2:57 pmFollowed by: 192 members; Location: Everywhere; Thanked: 503 times; GMAT Score:780

by Bill@VeritasPrep » Fri Apr 06, 2012 8:23 am

I think this sentence is an unusual example of parallelism; it's more complex than sentences you can expect to see on the GMAT. The words in light blue are modifiers that describe the nouns used for parallelism (confluence, etc.), so you need not consider them when looking for parallel form.

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patanjali.purpose: Legendary Member; Posts: 784; Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:51 amFollowed by: 12 members; Thanked: 114 times

by patanjali.purpose » Fri Apr 06, 2012 11:04 am

Bill@VeritasPrep wrote:Originally developed by ancient Hawaiians, surfing appeals to people due to the sport's unusual confluence of adrenaline, skill, and high paced maneuvering, an unpredictable backdrop that is, by turns, graceful and serene, violent and formidable, and the camaraderie that often develops among people in their common quest to conquer nature.

1) It's verbose, but I think it's okay. I'd use "because of" instead of "due to" though.

2) Yep, it's parallel. "unusual confluence...unpredictable backdrop...camaraderie." The presence of modifiers on the first two does not ruin the parallelism.

3) There is not a third element, but it's okay

Thanks Bill - how do we know the 3rd element may or may not be there in a list/series (as you hv mentioned in 3)

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Bill@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 1248; Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2012 2:57 pmFollowed by: 192 members; Location: Everywhere; Thanked: 503 times; GMAT Score:780

by Bill@VeritasPrep » Fri Apr 06, 2012 12:28 pm

If there were a third element, it would have to follow the pattern set by the first two, which are "graceful and serene" and "violent and formidable". The next part of the sentence is "the camaraderie that often..."

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