Sentence Correction

Along the major rivers that traverse the deserts of northeast Africa, the Middle East, and northwest India, the combination of a reliable supply of water and good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in at least 6,000 years.

(A) good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in
(B) good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured for
(c) of good growing conditions have encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endured for
(D) of good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured
(E) of good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, been enduring for

alex.gellatly wrote:Along the major rivers that traverse the deserts of northeast Africa, the Middle East, and northwest India, the combination of a reliable supply of water and good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in at least 6,000 years.

(A) good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in
(B) good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured for
(c) of good growing conditions have encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endured for
(D) of good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured
(E) of good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, been enduring for

Let's go option by option.

Option A:
the combination of X and Y both encouraged blah blah.
Here "combination" and "both" are redundant.
See the last part of the sentence. it indicates that we need present perfect tense; therefore, "endured in" is incorrect. ==> Eliminate A.

Option B:
This option corrects all the problems present in option A. Keep it.

Option C:
"Traditions that endured for" has used past tense "endured" instead of "have endured for". ==> Eliminate C.

Option D:
"Traditions that have endured" is correct but it lacks "for". ==> Eliminate D.

Option E:
"Traditions that have been enduring for" have used present perfect continuous tense, but we need present perfect tense. ==> Eliminate E.

The option B, the best choice, stands as the correct answer.

Would love to have an expert chime in -

Is it correct to assume that the "farming traditions" are still ongoing - to justify usage of "have".

My questions is - can we justify the usage of "have" by this rule - "When we are talking now in the present - about something in the past - we use Present Perfect. "
e.g. They seem to have developed this habit before their extinction 600 years ago.

sw222 wrote:Would love to have an expert chime in -

Is it correct to assume that the "farming traditions" are still ongoing - to justify usage of "have".

My questions is - can we justify the usage of "have" by this rule - "When we are talking now in the present - about something in the past - we use Present Perfect. "
e.g. They seem to have developed this habit before their extinction 600 years ago.

Good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured for at least 6,000 years.

You are asking the wrong question.
The question you should ask is as follows:
Does HAVE ENDURED (present perfect) convey a sensical meaning?
One purpose of the present perfect is to express an action that started in the past and might continue in the present.
It is possible that the farming traditions that were encouraged in the past are still in effect right now, justifying the use of the present perfect.
Since a sensical meaning is conveyed, do not eliminate the answer choice.

Hi GGNY
can you please explain why E is incorrect.

hi Guru
please correct me if i am wrong
i feel that the construction: the combination of X and of Y is wrong. do we really need to put that second "of" after "and"

Also please tell me as what is so outright wrong about present perfect continuous in E

alex.gellatly wrote:Along the major rivers that traverse the deserts of northeast Africa, the Middle East, and northwest India, the combination of a reliable supply of water and good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in at least 6,000 years.

(A) good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in
(B) good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured for
(c) of good growing conditions have encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endured for
(D) of good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured
(E) of good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, been enduring for

A and D: To yield a parallel structure, both encouraged must be followed by and + VERB.
Eliminate A and D.

C and E: the combination OF a reliable supply and OF good growing conditions
Here, the of in red seems to imply that there are two distinct combinations:
the combination OF a reliable supply AND the combination OF good growing conditions
Not the intended meaning.
The required idiom is the combination of X and Y.
Eliminate C and E.

The correct answer is B.

E: have been enduring
have been + VERBing serves to express a CONTINUOUS ACTION.
Here, to endure means TO LAST.
To last is an action that -- on its own -- is continuous.
Since to endure on its own conveys a continuous action, the use of a continous tense seems redundant.

GMATGuruNY wrote:

alex.gellatly wrote:Along the major rivers that traverse the deserts of northeast Africa, the Middle East, and northwest India, the combination of a reliable supply of water and good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in at least 6,000 years.

(A) good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in
(B) good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured for
(c) of good growing conditions have encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endured for
(D) of good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured
(E) of good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, been enduring for

A and D: To yield a parallel structure, both encouraged must be followed by and + VERB.
Eliminate A and D.

C and E: the combination OF a reliable supply and OF good growing conditions
Here, the of in red seems to imply that there are two distinct combinations:
the combination OF a reliable supply AND the combination OF good growing conditions
Not the intended meaning.
The required idiom is the combination of X and Y.
Eliminate C and E.

The correct answer is B.

E: have been enduring
have been + VERBing serves to express a CONTINUOUS ACTION.
Here, to endure means TO LAST.
To last is an action that -- on its own -- is continuous.
Since to endure on its own conveys a continuous action, the use of a continous tense seems redundant.

Hi Mitch, do we have an agreement issue in C? Should "the combination OF X and OF Y" be plural or singular? I'm asking as I came across a problem in which "transpiration FROM soil and FROM plants" is considered singular.

Thank in advanced for your help.

7l7t7 wrote:

Along the major rivers that traverse the deserts of northeast Africa, the Middle East, and northwest India, the combination of a reliable supply of water and good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in at least 6,000 years.

(c) of good growing conditions have encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endured for

Hi Mitch, do we have an agreement issue in C? Should "the combination OF X and OF Y" be plural or singular? I'm asking as I came across a problem in which "transpiration FROM soil and FROM plants" is considered singular.

Thank in advanced for your help.

Correct!
In C, have encouraged (plural) does not agree with the combination (singular).

Thanks very much, Mitch.

It would help if one can identify that this sentence required past perfect tense - "that have endured". Based on this, eliminate A, C and E
In (D), "both" is redundant.
So, answer is (B)

Hello Everyone!

This is a great example of a GMAT question that focuses on idiomatic structure and parallelism! Let's take a closer look at the original question and highlight the major differences between options in orange:

Along the major rivers that traverse the deserts of northeast Africa, the Middle East, and northwest India, the combination of a reliable supply of water and good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in at least 6,000 years.

(A) good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in
(B) good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured for
(C) of good growing conditions have encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endured for
(D) of good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured
(E) of good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, been enduring for

After a quick glance over the options, there are 3 main things we can focus on:

1. good / of good (parallelism/idioms)
2. both encouraged / encouraged / have encouraged (verb tense/idioms)
3. endure in / endured for / endured / enduring for (idioms)

Since #1 on our list will eliminate 2-3 options right away, let's start there. When we look at the sentence as a whole, we see that we're talking about a combination of 2 items here: a reliable supply of water and good growing conditions. The proper idiomatic structure for this would be the following:

a combination of X and Y

Let's see which options do this correctly, and rule out the ones that don't:

(A) good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in --> a combination of X and Y both = WRONG
(B) good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured for --> a combination of X and Y = GOOD
(C) of good growing conditions have encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endured for --> a combination of X and of Y = WRONG
(D) of good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured --> a combination of X and of Y both = WRONG
(E) of good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, been enduring for --> a combination of X and of Y = WRONG

There you go! Option B is the correct choice because it's the only one that uses the proper idiomatic format for "a combination of X and Y!"

**********
Wonder what would've happened if we focused on another part of the list instead? Let's see what would happen if we focused on #3 on our list: endure in / endured for / endured / enduring for:

(A) good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endure in

This is INCORRECT. It's not idiomatically correct to say something "endures in" a certain number of years. We say that things "endure for" a certain number of years!

(B) good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured for

This is still CORRECT because it's proper to say something "endured for" a number of years. Also, by using past perfect tense (have endured), it's clear that these farming traditions started 6,000 years ago, and they're still being used today.

(C) of good growing conditions have encouraged farming traditions that, in places, endured for

This is INCORRECT because it uses plain past tense, which means the farming traditions started in the past and ended in the past. The intended meaning of the original sentence was to say that these traditions started in the past and are still going on today.

(D) of good growing conditions both encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, endured

This is INCORRECT because it doesn't make sense to say that farming traditions "endured 6,000 years." It's not idiomatically correct - we say that things "endured for" an amount of time.

(E) of good growing conditions encouraged farming traditions that have, in places, been enduring for

While this is OKAY, based on the idiomatic "enduring for" and the use of present perfect continuous tense, we would eventually have to rule it out as INCORRECT because it doesn't use the idiomatic "combination of X and Y" structure correctly.

In the end, option B is still the correct choice!


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