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Parallelism

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by GHong14 » Thu Dec 16, 2010 9:38 am
The Transcontinental Railroad had immediate and far reaching effects on America, including a population explosion in the west, the decline of native Americans, the joining of East coast culture and Western convention, and the cultivations of thousands of acres of new farmland.

Can anyone explain to me how the proceeding sentence is parallel. My understanding is that it is an example of parallel nouns but in the exam i would definitely see decline, joining, explosion, and cultivation as verbs or adjectives. Any advice to know when you are dealing with parallel nouns on the GMAT?
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by GHong14 » Thu Dec 16, 2010 9:40 am
Another example is:

Symptoms of severe allergic reaction may include dizziness, hives or rashes, swelling of the wound, difficulty breathing, intense itching, and the loss of consciousness.

The conjunctions do not look parallel to me at all.
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by uwhusky » Thu Dec 16, 2010 12:06 pm
GHong14 wrote:The Transcontinental Railroad had immediate and far reaching effects on America, including a population explosion in the west, the decline of native Americans, the joining of East coast culture and Western convention, and the cultivations of thousands of acres of new farmland.

Can anyone explain to me how the proceeding sentence is parallel. My understanding is that it is an example of parallel nouns but in the exam i would definitely see decline, joining, explosion, and cultivation as verbs or adjectives. Any advice to know when you are dealing with parallel nouns on the GMAT?
The hint here is the definite article "the," which GMAT will use to clarify the usage of gerund.

All of the italic words above are used as nouns and in the context, they are all parallel as noun phrases.
Yep.
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by ikaplan » Fri Dec 17, 2010 1:50 am
also think in this way- the most correct option would be 'the join of'... but think again! can you really say 'the join of'- not really; in such cases, GMAT introduced "the" and adds gerund! Additionally, "decline" and "explosion" are nouns- the gerund is a noun as well. So in this case, the parallelism works because all of the words you put in italics are in fact nouns (join is also a noun but if you look up in the dictionary it has completely different meaning.
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by Jim@Grockit » Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:43 pm
uwhusky wrote:
GHong14 wrote:The Transcontinental Railroad had immediate and far reaching effects on America, including a population explosion in the west, the decline of native Americans, the joining of East coast culture and Western convention, and the cultivations of thousands of acres of new farmland.

Can anyone explain to me how the proceeding sentence is parallel. My understanding is that it is an example of parallel nouns but in the exam i would definitely see decline, joining, explosion, and cultivation as verbs or adjectives. Any advice to know when you are dealing with parallel nouns on the GMAT?
The hint here is the definite article "the," which GMAT will use to clarify the usage of gerund.

All of the italic words above are used as nouns and in the context, they are all parallel as noun phrases.
I just want to underscore this with the addition that words like "decline" and "joining" could also be marked as nouns by the indefinite article (a/an). The article is the only clue sometimes, and it completely changes participle/verb to noun.
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