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Placement of Conjunction

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by uwhusky » Wed Jun 16, 2010 2:18 pm
The normative model of strategic decision-making suggests that executives examine a firm's external environment and internal conditions, and in using the set of objective criteria they derive from these analyses, can decide on a strategy.

A. conditions, and in using the set of objective criteria they derive from these analyses, can decide
B. conditions, and they use the set of objective criteria derived from these analyses in deciding
C. conditions and, in using the set of objective criteria derived from these analyses, deciding
D. conditions and, using the set of objective criteria derived from these analyses, decide
E. conditions and, in their use of the set of objective criteria they derive from these analyses, they decide

Using D to fill in the blank:

The normative model of strategic decision-making suggests that executives examine a firm's external environment and internal conditions and, using the set of objective criteria derived from these analyses, decide on a strategy.

I have couple questions regarding this answer:

First is the usage of conjunction "and" in this context. Why isn't the comma being placed before "and", but rather after.

Second, what is the role of the clause "decide on a strategy"?
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by hardik.jadeja » Wed Jun 16, 2010 5:01 pm
uwhusky wrote: First is the usage of conjunction "and" in this context. Why isn't the comma being placed before "and", but rather after.
Because the part of the sentence between two commas is an adverbial modifier modifying the verb "decide".
uwhusky wrote: Second, what is the role of the clause "decide on a strategy"?
Actually the sentence is something like this.

The normative model of strategic decision-making suggests that executives examine a firm's external environment and internal conditions and decide on a strategy.

Observe "X and Y" parallelism.

Hope that helps...
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by uwhusky » Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:16 am
Thank you. Yes, it does answer my question. I guess I didn't fully understand the usage of the comma, but I do understand the structure of this sentence now.
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by kvcpk » Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:17 am
Good Question uwhusky and good Job Hardik. I was stumped for the first minute looking at the answer.

@ Hardik - How are you so easily able to analyse the adverbial modifiers, adjectival phrases, prepositional phrases, etc..
I think it would take years for me to reach you!!

Anyways.. good job and all the best :)
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by hardik.jadeja » Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:31 am
kvcpk wrote:Good Question uwhusky and good Job Hardik. I was stumped for the first minute looking at the answer.

@ Hardik - How are you so easily able to analyse the adverbial modifiers, adjectival phrases, prepositional phrases, etc..
I think it would take years for me to reach you!!

Anyways.. good job and all the best :)
kvcpk, thank you for the kind words. But the fact is I hardly knew any of these topics couple of months back. These topics are not very difficult. They are actually very easy to learn. It just needs little bit of practice to master them.

And trust me, if I can do it, I am sure you can do it too.

Cheers.
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by RumpelThickSkin » Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:38 am
hardik.jadeja wrote:
uwhusky wrote: First is the usage of conjunction "and" in this context. Why isn't the comma being placed before "and", but rather after.
Because the part of the sentence between two commas is an adverbial modifier modifying the verb "decide".
uwhusky wrote: Second, what is the role of the clause "decide on a strategy"?
Actually the sentence is something like this.

The normative model of strategic decision-making suggests that executives examine a firm's external environment and internal conditions and decide on a strategy.

Observe "X and Y" parallelism.



Hope that helps...

Hardik should become a GMAT tutor hahaha.. Super stuff!
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by FightWithGMAT » Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:52 am
hardik.jadeja wrote:
uwhusky wrote: First is the usage of conjunction "and" in this context. Why isn't the comma being placed before "and", but rather after.
Because the part of the sentence between two commas is an adverbial modifier modifying the verb "decide".
uwhusky wrote: Second, what is the role of the clause "decide on a strategy"?
Actually the sentence is something like this.

The normative model of strategic decision-making suggests that executives examine a firm's external environment and internal conditions and decide on a strategy.

Observe "X and Y" parallelism.

Hope that helps...

Hardik, are you sure it is a adverbial modifier.

I think the modifier is modifying a noun- the executives


using.....blah blah.............., the executives decide

Well, I may be interpreting the things incorrectly, but your inputs can make it clear.
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by hardik.jadeja » Thu Jun 17, 2010 11:07 am
FightWithGMAT wrote: Hardik, are you sure it is a adverbial modifier.

I think the modifier is modifying a noun- the executives


using.....blah blah.............., the executives decide

Well, I may be interpreting the things incorrectly, but your inputs can make it clear.
Unlike Adverbial modifiers, Noun modifiers have to placed adjacent to the noun they are modifying.

None of the options have the modifier " using the set of objective.." and the noun "executives" placed adjacent to each other as you have in your example.

Apart from this, usually adverbial modifier answers one of these three adverb questions: How? When? or Why?

If we look at the sentence again, the modifier does answer the following question.

How to decide on a strategy?
Answer - using the set of objective criteria derived from these analyses

Hope that helps..
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by Erfun_GMATCompass » Thu Jun 17, 2010 2:45 pm
Interesting question.

You use a comma before "and" when you're joining two new clauses. For example, "I love the GMAT, and I study for it every day." On the other hand, if you're using "and" to join two verbs, both of which are done by the subject, you don't use a comma before the "and." For example, "I love the GMAT and study for it ever day." In this second example, "and" is like a parallel marker in that it joins two verbs that describe what the subject of the clause (I) is doing.

Although the GMAT doesn't explicitly test the use of commas, it is indeed helpful to understand how commas are used as that knowledge will help you discern the correct grammatical structure of a sentence.
uwhusky wrote:The normative model of strategic decision-making suggests that executives examine a firm's external environment and internal conditions, and in using the set of objective criteria they derive from these analyses, can decide on a strategy.

A. conditions, and in using the set of objective criteria they derive from these analyses, can decide
B. conditions, and they use the set of objective criteria derived from these analyses in deciding
C. conditions and, in using the set of objective criteria derived from these analyses, deciding
D. conditions and, using the set of objective criteria derived from these analyses, decide
E. conditions and, in their use of the set of objective criteria they derive from these analyses, they decide

Using D to fill in the blank:

The normative model of strategic decision-making suggests that executives examine a firm's external environment and internal conditions and, using the set of objective criteria derived from these analyses, decide on a strategy.

I have couple questions regarding this answer:

First is the usage of conjunction "and" in this context. Why isn't the comma being placed before "and", but rather after.

Second, what is the role of the clause "decide on a strategy"?
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by uwhusky » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:08 pm
Thank you for the added explanation. I was completely thrown off by the location of the comma and thus skewed my take on the structure of the sentence. Once I understood why the comma exist at its current location, the structure became quite clear and so was the answer.

I am still a bit confused on how the sentence can have two conjunction words so close together without some sort of punctuation. Doesn't this structure make the sentence difficult to comprehend?
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by prepgmat09 » Thu Oct 21, 2010 1:27 am
Could anyone please tell me what is wrong with B. I am convinced with D, however I do not understand why B is wrong. B presents two independent clauses joined with a COMMA + AND. This is a valid usage. So, I am confused. Is there a problem with the pronoun "they"?
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by niksworth » Thu Oct 21, 2010 5:24 am
prepgmat09 wrote:Could anyone please tell me what is wrong with B. I am convinced with D, however I do not understand why B is wrong. B presents two independent clauses joined with a COMMA + AND. This is a valid usage. So, I am confused. Is there a problem with the pronoun "they"?
B is wrong because in deciding on is idiomatically incorrect.
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by niksworth » Thu Oct 21, 2010 5:35 am
This is really interesting. Everyone here seems to agree that -

and, adverbial modifier, independent clause is acceptable.

I was of the opinion that we need to have the comma before and not after the conjunction.

William Strunk helped me out here. Quoting from the Elements of Style (Ch 2, Rule 3) -

If a parenthetic expression is preceded by a conjunction, place the first comma before the conjunction, not after it.

e.g. He saw us coming, and unaware that we had learned of his treachery, greeted us with a smile.
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by vishalj » Thu Oct 21, 2010 5:27 pm
Hardik - Are you sure that " using the set of objective criteria" is only an adverbial modifier? To me, it seems that it is a participial modifier as well. As we know,the participial modifier modifies noun. Most of the time, the participial modifier is adjacent to noun if it is separated by comma. If there is no comma, the participial modifier should always be adjacent to noun.

Now here, the participial modifier is modifying the noun "executives". To find the subject or noun, we need to ask ourselves the question - who is using the set of objective criteria? And the answer is clearly "executives".

Also, it is not unusual to see participial modifier after conjunction. Eg. Steve is talking to Jonna while driving car. The construction is different, but I used this example to state the point.

Now, it is also an adverbial modifier as it did answer the "how" question.

So the conclusion is that we can solve this either way. Let me know what you think.
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by prepgmat09 » Thu Oct 21, 2010 11:20 pm
niksworth wrote:This is really interesting. Everyone here seems to agree that -

and, adverbial modifier, independent clause is acceptable.

I was of the opinion that we need to have the comma before and not after the conjunction.

William Strunk helped me out here. Quoting from the Elements of Style (Ch 2, Rule 3) -

If a parenthetic expression is preceded by a conjunction, place the first comma before the conjunction, not after it.

e.g. He saw us coming, and unaware that we had learned of his treachery, greeted us with a smile.
Although you have quoted William Strunk, making me think twice before making a comment, I think the sentence mentioned above is gramatically incorrect. This is because the sentence should be meaningful even when the modifiers are removed. In the above sentence, if we remove the modifier (enclosed in commas), the sentence reads:

He saw us coming greeted us with a smile.

This sentence without modifiers does not make much logical or grammatical sense.
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