TheGraduate wrote:Why would the following construction be incorrect ? :
The single family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California,
was conical in shape
, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine,
and was banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

I am assuming the reader would not have any prior knowledge of Native American houses.

Could "its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine" not parenthetically modify the house?

It's important to remember that Sentence Correction isn't simply a matter of assessing whether a given sentence is correct. We're attempting to select the best of the available options. It can certainly be the case that you're choosing between two sentences that are both grammatically correct, but one is less logical or wordier, etc. In this case, we had a choice between stating that the poles were banked with dirt and stating that the entire houses were banked with dirt. Now, I have no inside knowledge about Native American houses, but it isn't hard for me to imagine why poles might be banked with dirt - they'll be sturdier that way. I guess a house could be banked with dirt, but I haven't the faintest idea why this would be desirable. So one option seemed to be more logical than the other. But I suspect that the question-writers may have had a similar conversation to the one we're engaged in now. (Maybe Native American houses are banked with dirt for good reasons!) So to be safe, they included the illogical phrase "as high as three to four feet" so that there'd be another concrete reason to eliminate D. The bigger takeaway here: if you have two answer choices that are both grammatical, you want to select the one that is more logical. (And if both options feel logical, look for other differences to determine which is the best of the bunch.)

GMATGuruNY wrote:

TheGraduate wrote:Why would is the following construction be incorrect ? :
The single family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California,
was conical in shape
, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine,
and was banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

I am assuming the reader would not have any prior knowledge of Native American houses.

Could "its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine" not parenthetically modify the house?

Proposed answer choice:
The single family house was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and was banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.
The portion in blue is an absolute phrase.
For a discussion of this type of modifier, check the following:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/sir-joseph-t59644-15.html (second post)
https://www.beatthegmat.com/sc-doubt-t283445.html
Here, the absolute phrase appears in the middle of the clause in red.
To my knowledge, there is no precedent for this structure on the GMAT.
Generally, an absolute phrase on the GMAT follows the end of an independent clause.
For this reason, the GMAT would be unlikely to offer the structure above as an OA.

Dear Mitch,

Why is 'as high as' wrong? what is difference between 'as high as' and 'the height of....'

Mo2men wrote:Dear Mitch,

Why is 'as high as' wrong? what is difference between 'as high as' and 'the height of....'

OA: its framework...banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet
Here, the portion in blue is an ADVERB serving to modify banked, expressing HOW the framework was BANKED.
Question: HOW was the framework banked?
Answer: It was banked TO A HEIGHT OF THREE TO FOUR FEET.

D: its framework...banked with dirt as high as three to four feet
Here, the portion in red seems to be an adjective describing dirt.
Question: What KIND of dirt?
Answer: Dirt AS HIGH AS THREE TO FOUR FEET.
Not the intended meaning.
The intention here is not to describe the type of dirt but to express how the framework was banked.