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Egypt pyramids

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Egypt pyramids

by AnjaliOberoi » Thu Jan 23, 2014 8:14 am
Rivaling the pyramids of Egypt or even the ancient cities of the Maya as an achievement, the
army of terra-cotta warriors created to protect Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor, in his
afterlife is more than 2,000 years old and took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete
them.
A. took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete them
B. took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete it
C. took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete
D. 700,000 artisans took more than 36 years to complete
E. to complete them too 700,000 artisans more than 36 years

OA C, why not B...C sounds incomplete and also what is the issue with D..
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by theCodeToGMAT » Thu Jan 23, 2014 11:09 am
Rivaling the pyramids of Egypt or even the ancient cities of the Maya as an achievement, the army of terra-cotta warriors created to protect Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor, in his afterlife is more than 2,000 years old and took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete
them.
A. took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete them
INCORRECT; "terra-cotta warriors" is already the subject of the sentence.. we don't need "them" to refer back to "terra-cotta warriors" .. that's redundancy ..


B. took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete it
INCORRECT; "terra-cotta warriors" is already the subject of the sentence.. we don't need "it" to refer back to "terra-cotta warriors" .. that's redundancy ..

C. took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete

D. 700,000 artisans took more than 36 years to complete
INCORRECT; run-on sentence - two independent clauses connected with "and"

E. to complete them too 700,000 artisans more than 36 years
INCORRECT; awkward.......
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by AnjaliOberoi » Thu Jan 23, 2014 7:14 pm
Still not able to get.. :(
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by shinys » Fri Jan 24, 2014 6:07 am
Try seeing it this way:
verb-ing modifier, the army of terra-cotta warriors verb-ed modifier + Prepositional phrase is more than 2,000 years old and took 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete.
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by ceilidh.erickson » Fri Jan 24, 2014 3:00 pm
The issue here is PARALLELISM. First, strip away all of the modifiers:

(Rivaling the pyramids of Egypt or even the ancient cities of the Maya as an achievement,) THE ARMY (of terra-cotta warriors created to protect Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor, in his afterlife) IS more than 2,000 years old AND TOOK 700,000 artisans more than 36 years to complete them.

Rahul, be careful - the subject is not "terra cotta warriors," it is "army."

The AND tells us that we need a parallel list: The army is... and took...[/i]

We can't say "the army took artisans more than 36 years to complete them," we just say "to complete."

In D, if we say "700,000 artisans took..." then we're starting a new independent clause. That would only work if there was a comma before AND. Since there is no comma, we can't start a new clause, and "took" has to go with the subject "army."
Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
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