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How is this sentence correct?

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by bellcurve » Thu Aug 25, 2011 8:34 am
The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

Isn't "...,were imprudent" incorrect?

Thanks!
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by GmatKiss » Thu Aug 25, 2011 8:43 am
bellcurve wrote:The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

Isn't "...,were imprudent" incorrect?

Thanks!
Hi,
Is this a valid GMAT Question? If so, please mention the source of the same.
If not please refrain posting such questions in this forum!

Thanks,
GK
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by bellcurve » Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:21 am
This is not a GMAT question. Understanding grammar and how the sentences are constructed in the English language is the theme of SC. Learning is learning wherever you learn it from. You have to learn only from GMAT questions is a stupid idea. Is doing grammar a GMAT book? No! Does it help GMAT test takers? Hell yes!
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by XLogic » Thu Aug 25, 2011 7:26 pm
bellcurve wrote:This is not a GMAT question. Understanding grammar and how the sentences are constructed in the English language is the theme of SC. Learning is learning wherever you learn it from. You have to learn only from GMAT questions is a stupid idea. Is doing grammar a GMAT book? No! Does it help GMAT test takers? Hell yes!
Hmm, some good points but... this forum is about the GMAT. In order to get concrete answers to grammar tested on the GMAT, it makes sense to post mostly (if not all) GMAT SC questions. (or at least, questions testing GMAT rules)

GMAT does not test all English grammar rules; therefore, it is not necessary (or efficient) to study just any random Grammar topic. Why? cos if the topic in question is not tested on the GMAT, then the answer to the question is irrelevant. I think that's the reason for GmatKiss's comment. (though I do agree that you are free to post as you see fit)

Either way, Work hard, but work smart :-)
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by winniethepooh » Thu Aug 25, 2011 9:09 pm
bellcurve wrote:The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

Isn't "...,were imprudent" incorrect?

Thanks!
I agree that the sentence formation is a bit absurd; the clause 'were imprudent' should have been preceded by they or some proper plural noun(probably Haverfords here). This is what the sentence suggests.
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by GmatKiss » Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:07 pm
bellcurve wrote:This is not a GMAT question. Understanding grammar and how the sentences are constructed in the English language is the theme of SC. Learning is learning wherever you learn it from. You have to learn only from GMAT questions is a stupid idea. Is doing grammar a GMAT book? No! Does it help GMAT test takers? Hell yes!
Is this the right forum where you have placed the right question? Hell no!!!!
Is it useful to someone, atleast? Hell no!!!

Remove this post?! Hell YES! :) :)
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by winniethepooh » Fri Aug 26, 2011 2:19 am
GmatKiss wrote:
bellcurve wrote:This is not a GMAT question. Understanding grammar and how the sentences are constructed in the English language is the theme of SC. Learning is learning wherever you learn it from. You have to learn only from GMAT questions is a stupid idea. Is doing grammar a GMAT book? No! Does it help GMAT test takers? Hell yes!
Is this the right forum where you have placed the right question? Hell no!!!!
Is it useful to someone, atleast? Hell no!!!

Remove this post?! Hell YES! :) :)
You may consider editing your post, I am sure that this is surely not a forum wherein you should be typing any slang!
Please don't pass judgements over which question is right and which is not justified. A question is posted only because the OP has a doubt. No one can surely justify if the doubt is valid or not.
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by bellcurve » Fri Aug 26, 2011 6:00 am
Connecting two ideas/clauses in a sentence is the primarily tested error in GMAT. Parallelism, comparisons etc. depends on your understanding of how to connect two or more ideas properly. If you are truly trying to learn, you try to parse sentences wherever you see them and try to learn from them. The sentences written by true professionals are golden for learning the trick of the trade. The above sentence was pulled from a Pulitzer prize winning novel.

It seems to me that the sentence that I posted connects two independent ideas improperly. If we have to break the clauses into at least two, those would be following:
1. The Haverfords had ... of a mare.
2. The Haverfords were imprudent enough to ... defense for anybody.

The author connects two sentences into one without using any conjunctions. "The Haverfords ... of a mare" is independent clause by itself. The second sentence was just tagged at the end using just a comma. Now, I am wondering how is this a proper connection of two sentences. Since the sentence is pulled from a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, I could not say this is absolutely wrong out right. Any explanations?
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by XLogic » Fri Aug 26, 2011 6:30 am
@bellcurve, You are probably right. Not sure that takes away from what I posted earlier.
In any case, assuming the excerpt you posted was copied verbatim, I think comma+"who" is missing.

The Haverfords, who had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

What do you think?

PS. I still raise the point that if we dispute about something that's not generally agreed upon, we wouldn't necessarily have one official source to go to. In this case, as you rightly pointed out, "conjunction/parallelism" are tested on the GMAT. But I still support the idea of posting GMAT SC (or related) questions rather than random statements from "novels".
Last edited by XLogic on Fri Aug 26, 2011 6:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by XLogic » Fri Aug 26, 2011 6:46 am
winniethepooh wrote:
GmatKiss wrote:
bellcurve wrote:This is not a GMAT question. Understanding grammar and how the sentences are constructed in the English language is the theme of SC. Learning is learning wherever you learn it from. You have to learn only from GMAT questions is a stupid idea. Is doing grammar a GMAT book? No! Does it help GMAT test takers? Hell yes!
Is this the right forum where you have placed the right question? Hell no!!!!
Is it useful to someone, atleast? Hell no!!!

Remove this post?! Hell YES! :) :)
You may consider editing your post, I am sure that this is surely not a forum wherein you should be typing any slang!
Please don't pass judgements over which question is right and which is not justified. A question is posted only because the OP has a doubt. No one can surely justify if the doubt is valid or not.
Well said sir. I don't support telling someone *NOT* to post something. Ultimately the decision is up to the author of the post. We can only make suggestions -- which I have.

@GmatKiss, Let's tone this down please :-)
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by bellcurve » Fri Aug 26, 2011 11:20 am
Here is the explanation from one of the verbal killer who scored 51 in verbal, if anybody wanted to know.

The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

If you look at the text, essentially what you have is a past tense description of a list of events. Essentially the sentence and all of its dependent clauses are describing "The Haverfords" and not what they did. Separate the three clauses and take out fluff from each sentence and you are left with this:

The Haverfords had dispatched...
were imprudent enough to do it...
and insisted that...

Make it a shorter sentence and you'll see its actually grammatically correct. Here I'll make something up to show you what I mean:

"The Haverfords had dispatched the blacksmith, were imprudent enough to do it at night, and insisted that the work be done by morning"

Now you see that in reality, inserting a "Who", as you suggest, would make the sentence not make sense: "The Haverfords, who had dispatched the blacksmith, were imprudent enough to do it at night, and insisted the work be done by morning." This sentence is clearly grammatically incorrect.
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by XLogic » Fri Aug 26, 2011 5:17 pm
@bellcurve, so you got your question answered then.
I don't know about you, but I'm not sure your post added much value.

Anyways, take care.
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by winniethepooh » Fri Aug 26, 2011 10:45 pm
bellcurve wrote:Here is the explanation from one of the verbal killer who scored 51 in verbal, if anybody wanted to know.

The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

If you look at the text, essentially what you have is a past tense description of a list of events. Essentially the sentence and all of its dependent clauses are describing "The Haverfords" and not what they did. Separate the three clauses and take out fluff from each sentence and you are left with this:

The Haverfords had dispatched...
were imprudent enough to do it...
and insisted that...

Make it a shorter sentence and you'll see its actually grammatically correct. Here I'll make something up to show you what I mean:

"The Haverfords had dispatched the blacksmith, were imprudent enough to do it at night, and insisted that the work be done by morning"

Now you see that in reality, inserting a "Who", as you suggest, would make the sentence not make sense: "The Haverfords, who had dispatched the blacksmith, were imprudent enough to do it at night, and insisted the work be done by morning." This sentence is clearly grammatically incorrect.
So, do you mean the original sentence itself is correct?

I don't understand what or who is 'were' describing. I am very sure it has some error.
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