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Article Usage - Exam Pack 2

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by aji12 » Mon Jun 19, 2017 6:40 pm
In an America steeped in romanticism, cemeteries were laid out beyond the city as places for a transcendental contemplation of nature, death and duty.

A. In an America steeped in romanticism, cemeteries were laid out
B. In America steeped in romanticism, cemeteries were laid out
C. In an America steeped in romanticism, cemeteries laid
D. Cemeteries, in America steeped in romanticism, were laid
E Cemeteries in an America steeped in romanticism laid

Source - Exam Pack 2
OA - A

I was of opinion that article usage is not tested in GMAT. I chose B thinking that the article is not tested in GMAT, so let's chose less wordy one. (Although there is just 1-word difference. Stupid logic :P)
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by ceilidh.erickson » Tue Jun 20, 2017 4:41 pm
This is really tricky! You're right, normally we tell people that the GMAT doesn't test articles. But... in Sentence Correction, anything in the English language is theoretically fair game, so there may be exceptions to anything that the experts say "oh, you probably don't need to worry about that."

In this case, using the indefinite article "an America" is really an idiomatic way of saying "the way that the country was at this particular time." It's like there are multiple versions of America, and this is specifying which one. Think of A as saying:
In [this country that at the time was] steeped in romanticism, cemeteries were laid out...

The other thing that you could look at is MODIFIER usage. When we use a past participle such as "steeped," we can think about substituting the modifying dependent clause "that was steeped."

It makes sense to use this kind of modifying clause with an indefinite article:
"In an America that was steeped..."
Here, we're qualifying what kind of America.

It doesn't make much sense to use it without an article. No article = proper noun, i.e. there's only one, so we don't need to qualify which one.
"In America that was steeped..." doesn't work. We don't use essential modifiers for proper nouns in this way. (We could use the non-essential "which," but that would be a different construction).

Does that clarify things at all?
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by aji12 » Tue Jun 20, 2017 4:47 pm
It seems logical now. Thanks :)
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by Ali Tariq » Tue Jun 20, 2017 10:29 pm
Exclusion of an before America makes it general, whereas the inclusion of an before America makes it specific, as Ceilidh mentioned.
In general vs specific writing distinction, GMAC prefers latter.

On the other hand, omission ofcomma before and in non-underlined portion seems an editing error.
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by richachampion » Sat Sep 02, 2017 1:27 am
ceilidh.erickson wrote:This is really tricky! You're right, normally we tell people that the GMAT doesn't test articles. But... in Sentence Correction, anything in the English language is theoretically fair game, so there may be exceptions to anything that the experts say "oh, you probably don't need to worry about that."

In this case, using the indefinite article "an America" is really an idiomatic way of saying "the way that the country was at this particular time." It's like there are multiple versions of America, and this is specifying which one. Think of A as saying:
In [this country that at the time was] steeped in romanticism, cemeteries were laid out...

The other thing that you could look at is MODIFIER usage. When we use a past participle such as "steeped," we can think about substituting the modifying dependent clause "that was steeped."

It makes sense to use this kind of modifying clause with an indefinite article:
"In an America that was steeped..."
Here, we're qualifying what kind of America.

It doesn't make much sense to use it without an article. No article = proper noun, i.e. there's only one, so we don't need to qualify which one.
"In America that was steeped..." doesn't work. We don't use essential modifiers for proper nouns in this way. (We could use the non-essential "which," but that would be a different construction).

Does that clarify things at all?
Yes. Like always your solutions are enlightening.

Mam, I have a question:
were laid out/were laid /laid: Do you think this is also a split?
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