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Spain’s governing coalition

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by manik11 » Wed Jan 20, 2016 6:25 am
Spain's governing coalition has come under strain as it pushes its painful austerity measures, and it must now enforce agreed-upon measures, laying off 4,000 civil servants by the end of August, which will push forward a stalled project to privatize state assets.

A) Spain's governing coalition has come under strain as it pushes its painful austerity measures, and it must now enforce agreed-upon measures, laying off 4,000 civil servants by the end of August, which will push forward a stalled project to privatize state assets.

B) Spain's governing coalition, coming under strain as it pushes its painful austerity measures, must now enforce agreed-upon measures and lay off 4,000 civil servants by the end of August, pushing forward a stalled project to privatize state assets.

C) Spain's governing coalition, which has come under strain as it pushes its painful austerity measures, must now enforce agreed-upon measures, laying off 4,000 civil servants by the end of August and pushing forward a stalled project to privatize state assets.

D) Spain's governing coalition, which has come under strain as it pushes its painful austerity measures and must now enforce agreed-upon measures, laying off 4,000 civil servants by the end of August and pushing forward a stalled project to privatize state assets.

E) Spain's governing coalition has come under strain as it pushes its painful austerity measures; it must now enforce agreed-upon measures, and lay off 4,000 civil servants by the end of August, pushing forward a stalled project to privatize state assets.

OA : C
Source : Veritas Prep

Hi Experts..I have two questions.

1) Shouldn't it be "and push forward" instead of "and pushing forward" in the OA?
2) How do I eliminate E? I don't see anything wrong with this option. The semicolon properly joins two independent clauses.

Please let me know what I missed here.
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by MartyMurray » Thu Jan 21, 2016 12:17 am
manik11 wrote: 1) Shouldn't it be "and push forward" instead of "and pushing forward" in the OA?
Look at the OA. What the coalition must do as it enforces the measures involves two things in a list, laying off and pushing forward. Those two things are appropriately parallel in the OA.
2) How do I eliminate E? I don't see anything wrong with this option. The semicolon properly joins two independent clauses.
The semicolon is fine, but the meaning conveyed by the second clause is distorted. Maybe you missed the meaning issue because you were focusing on looking for a grammar or rule issue.

The meaning is distorted in the second clause in that the clause conveys that the governing coalition must enforce measures and lay off civil servants, and that via that process the coalition will push forward the stalled project to privatize assets. The undistorted meaning is that the measures involve two separate things, laying off civil servants and pushing forward the project to privatize assets.

I guess the construction of E is ok in a sense. Maybe part of the reason that I noticed the issue is because I saw that laying off civil servants is not a way to privatize assets. If you don't see that, eliminating E is more challenging than it is if you do.
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by manik11 » Thu Jan 21, 2016 3:21 am
Marty Murray wrote:
manik11 wrote: 1) Shouldn't it be "and push forward" instead of "and pushing forward" in the OA?
Look at the OA. What the coalition must do as it enforces the measures involves two things in a list, laying off and pushing forward. Those two things are appropriately parallel in the OA.
2) How do I eliminate E? I don't see anything wrong with this option. The semicolon properly joins two independent clauses.

The semicolon is fine, but the meaning conveyed by the second clause is distorted. Maybe you missed the meaning issue because you were focusing on looking for a grammar or rule issue.

The meaning is distorted in the second clause in that the clause conveys that the governing coalition must enforce measures and lay off civil servants, and that via that process the coalition will push forward the stalled project to privatize assets. The undistorted meaning is that the measures involve two separate things, laying off civil servants and pushing forward the project to privatize assets.

I guess the construction of E is ok in a sense. Maybe part of the reason that I noticed the issue is because I saw that laying off civil servants is not a way to privatize assets. If you don't see that, eliminating E is more challenging than it is if you do.

Thanks a lot Marty!
I completely missed the meaning. Just one follow up question...
Does verb-ing modifier always modify the preceding clause? For eg. in option E if we rephrase the sentence we'd get
How was the coalition trying to push forward the stalled project?
Answer : By laying off 4000 civil servants.
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by MartyMurray » Thu Jan 21, 2016 6:05 am
manik11 wrote:Just one follow up question...
Does verb-ing modifier always modify the preceding clause? For eg. in option E if we rephrase the sentence we'd get
How was the coalition trying to push forward the stalled project?
Answer : By laying off 4000 civil servants.
A verb -ing modifier, or participle phrase, set up the way the one is in E such that it follows a comma that follows a clause, generally modifies the entire clause or maybe a key part of the entire preceding clause.

Participle, or verb -ing or verb -ed, phrases can also modify nouns, as in the following examples. Notice that in each case there is no comma separating the modifier from the noun that it modifies.

The man playing the saxophone learned from Charlie Parker.

Her purple colored hair stood out in the somber setting.

Here's one where adding a comma changes the meaning. In the first version the verb -ing modifier modifies the preceding noun. In the second it modifies the entire clause.

John joked with the man making medicine of laughter.

John joked with the man, making medicine of laughter.
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by ceilidh.erickson » Thu Jan 21, 2016 9:22 am
Parallelism can be a particularly tricky issue. Sometimes there are several parallel structures that would be grammatically correct, but only one that makes sense.
1) Shouldn't it be "and push forward" instead of "and pushing forward" in the OA?
We could say: the coalition... must now enforce... and push forward...
Or we could say: the coalition... must now enforce..., laying off... and pushing forward...

Both of these would be grammatically correct, but the 2nd structure makes more sense: those are both measures that can be enforced.
2) How do I eliminate E? I don't see anything wrong with this option. The semicolon properly joins two independent clauses.
Marty addressed this point, but I'll just say - with both of these questions, your grammar analysis was correct, but you weren't thinking about the MEANING. The GMAT is really an executive reasoning test, so it's really trying to assess whether you're a logical thinker, more than whether you're a grammar expert. Make sure that meaning is your first point of entry into the question.
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by ceilidh.erickson » Thu Jan 21, 2016 9:26 am
For another example of a question that has 2 possible parallel structures, only 1 of which makes logical sense, see OG 2015 #127:
https://books.google.com/books?id=CHHrA ... rc&f=false
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by manik11 » Thu Jan 21, 2016 10:56 pm
ceilidh.erickson wrote:Make sure that meaning is your first point of entry into the question.
Thanks a lot Ceilidh! I'll always keep an eye out for the subtle change in meaning now.
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