Sound can travel through water for enormous distances,

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Sound can travel through water for enormous distances,
prevented from dissipating its acoustic energy as a result of
boundaries in the ocean created by water layers of different
temperatures and densities.

A. prevented from dissipating its acoustic energy as a
result of
B. prevented from having its acoustic energy dissipated by
C. its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by
D. its acoustic energy prevented from being dissipated as
a result of
E preventing its acoustic energy from dissipating by

(E)

I'm not sure what the rule being tested here is.

Passive voice and tense?

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by gmat_dest » Sat Aug 01, 2009 9:26 am
After seeing answer choices, my take will be on test of modifiers(present particples) and run-on sentences.

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doclkk wrote:Sound can travel through water for enormous distances,
prevented from dissipating its acoustic energy as a result of
boundaries in the ocean created by water layers of different
temperatures and densities.

A. prevented from dissipating its acoustic energy as a
result of
B. prevented from having its acoustic energy dissipated by
C. its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by
D. its acoustic energy prevented from being dissipated as
a result of
E preventing its acoustic energy from dissipating by

(E)

I'm not sure what the rule being tested here is.

Passive voice and tense?
DanaJ, Can you please comment why E is right, I thout of B what is wrong with B
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by vaibhav.iit2002 » Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:13 am
E is definitely correct.

B has multiple issues:
1. "Prevented" is incorrect modifier here, should be "preventing"
2. It is wordy ..."prevented from having...."
3. "dissipated by" needs to follow a preposition and correct use is "dissipating by"

preventing and dissipating will keep the sentence in present tense which is suggested by the start of the sentence.

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by sunnyjohn » Mon Sep 14, 2009 7:17 pm
This is classic case of usage of present participle.
I did not read the even A,B,C and D.


Sound can travel through water for enormous distances :-- This is an action, the result of this is saving the energy.
So use Present participle.

anyway you know : the word Prevention here modify the the verb "travel", because of traveling energy is being saved. So use present participle.

Present participle doesn't need to touch the word it modifies.

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by JGaynor » Thu Apr 08, 2010 9:52 am
Sorry to bring up an old topic...

I am looking at the OG verbal supplement and the OA is C...NOT E.

I did this question and chose E and I don't understand the explanation well enough....

any comments on the answer being C will be appreciated

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by prinit » Thu Apr 08, 2010 10:07 am
JGaynor wrote:Sorry to bring up an old topic...

I am looking at the OG verbal supplement and the OA is C...NOT E.

I did this question and chose E and I don't understand the explanation well enough....

any comments on the answer being C will be appreciated

I also picked up E. It seems that E is a well designed trap. But by reading the whole sentence again the use of prevented is required for parallelism (created in the later part). IMO in option C, its is just after comma and hence directly points to sound. But while re-reading the option E, preventing its appeared ambiguous.
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by subgeeth » Thu Apr 08, 2010 10:24 am
Clearly this is a passive voice sentence by looking at the word created by

As far as I know to be" + past participle = passive voice

So E is incorrect
its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by

I dont find to be verb here can any one explain this point.....
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by sumanr84 » Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:05 am
doclkk wrote:Sound can travel through water for enormous distances,
prevented from dissipating its acoustic energy as a result of
boundaries in the ocean created by water layers of different
temperatures and densities.

A. prevented from dissipating its acoustic energy as a
result of
B. prevented from having its acoustic energy dissipated by
C. its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by
D. its acoustic energy prevented from being dissipated as
a result of
E preventing its acoustic energy from dissipating by

(E)

I'm not sure what the rule being tested here is.

Passive voice and tense?
I too picked E but I am confused on C also.
Modifier has been introduced as a trap for easy pick and that's where I got entangled. Though, "-ING" modifiers can even modify an entire clause, the imp thing to note here is that the entire clause converted into NOUN Phrase should be able to function as the subject of the verb that is in -ING form(MGMAT-Modifier topic). Also, "ING" modifiers works best to express result of the main clause that is certainly not the case in E.

However, In C , it seems we are missing "working verb". A past participle cannot server as a working verb. So, its acoustic energy prevented should be Its acoustic energy is prevented.
C is saying that "acoustic energy prevented " but acoustic energy did not prevent anything rather "acoustic energy" got prevented due to travel thro water. So, It implies PASSIVE tone for rest half of the sentence.
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by kevincanspain » Thu Apr 08, 2010 1:41 pm
See how we can combine these two sentences.


Lisa has to run many errands.

Lisa's mother suffers from allergies that prevent her from leaving the house.


We can write

Lisa has to run many errands, allgeries preventing her mother from leaving the house. (active participle)

OR

Lisa has to run many errands, her mother prevented from leaving the house by allergies (passive participle)
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by ayushiiitm » Sat Apr 10, 2010 8:14 am
Why are C &D not considered as run on sentence?

I am very curious to know the flaw in my reasoning :)
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by akhpad » Sat Apr 10, 2010 9:12 am
This is from OG Verbal Review 2nd Edition
Question No 108

OG Answer:
C. its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by

But it seems to be run on sentence.

However, we can not question on OG answer.
Last edited by akhpad on Thu Jun 03, 2010 7:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

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by sumanr84 » Sat Apr 10, 2010 9:21 am
akhp77 wrote:This is from OG Verbal Review 2nd Edition
Question No 108

OG Answer:
C. its acoustic energy prevented from dissipating by

But it seems to be run on sentence.

However, we can not question on OG answer.
Hmm..Interesting..

akhp77,
Thanks for quoting the answer & source.
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by vscid » Sat Apr 10, 2010 9:47 am
kevincanspain wrote:See how we can combine these two sentences.


Lisa has to run many errands.

Lisa's mother suffers from allergies that prevent her from leaving the house.


We can write

Lisa has to run many errands, allgeries preventing her mother from leaving the house. (active participle)

OR

Lisa has to run many errands, her mother prevented from leaving the house by allergies (passive participle)
So is C incorrect?
The GMAT is indeed adaptable. Whenever I answer RC, it proficiently 'adapts' itself to mark my 'right' answer 'wrong'.

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by sumanr84 » Sat Apr 10, 2010 10:26 am
kevincanspain,

I really appreciate your help in resolving queries on BTG. However, what I have noted is that you usually give a thinking answer for a problem that leaves most of us unclear about the correct answer for the problem at hand.

Its good that you promote us to think and derive the answer ourselves but if you could provide an absolute answer for the problem at hand, at least in Spoiler that would really help us !!
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