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Australian embryologists

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Australian embryologists

by gmat740 » Sat Jun 06, 2009 7:59 am
42) Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolved as a kind of snorkel.
(A) that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolved
(B) that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving
(C) suggesting that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal with its trunk originally evolving
(D) to suggest that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolving
(E) to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolved


OA E

I am not convinced by the OA

I feel " is descended from" is wrong

please shed some light
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Re: Australian embryologists

by real2008 » Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:20 am
I too agree with you. 'is descended' is really difficult to digest. but 'originally evolving' is also difficult to agree with. however it appears to me choice e has parallel:

Australian embryologists have found evidence to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolved as a kind of snorkel

pl comment....
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by Domnu » Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:01 pm
When an 'and' is present, that is a tip-off to start searching for parallelism. Because of this, we can eliminate choices A, D (we need the word 'that'). Now, choice B can be eliminated since the answer suggests that the aquatic animal's trunk originally evolved... this leaves us with choices C and E. We need to choose 'is descended', since the elephant is currently descended from the aquatic animal... it's not like it was descended some time back and is no longer descended from that animal. So, the answer is E.
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by redsome » Sat Jun 20, 2009 2:23 am
I also got this question wrong because I did not know that "evidence to do sth" is a correct idiom. I eliminated D and E in the first place.:wink: In fact, "evidence to suggest" is quite common in English. Silly me! :roll:

Regarding gmat740's opinion, I looked up into Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and found out that
"to descend from sth" = "to develop from sth"
"to be descended from sth" = "to be related to sth"

From this information, both "is descended" and "descended" can be correct in this context.
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by hemanth28 » Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:37 am
is + participle .... hmmm ... i guess i need some real good explanation to be convinced... Would someone explain how this is possible... ??? :roll:
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by lunarpower » Mon Aug 31, 2009 4:22 am
"is descended from" is an idiomatic expression. it means "descended" in the sense of EVOLUTIONARY ANCESTRY.
this is the only sense in which you can use this idiom.

"had descended" / "has descended" (i.e., normal past perfect / present perfect) is incorrect in this sense, as it implies literal downward motion.

hope that helps
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by hariharakarthi » Mon Aug 31, 2009 5:05 am
Hi,


I am convinced with original ans choice E.

Is the ans choice below is also correct,

that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolved as a kind of snorkel.

But it is not mentioned in the set of the ans choices.

But my qn is,

Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that x and that y.

Is it correct?

Please explain in detail.
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by lunarpower » Tue Sep 15, 2009 12:49 pm
hariharakarthi wrote:But my qn is,

Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that x and that y.

Is it correct?
this would be fine.

it would be considered awkward because there are two "that"s so close together. presumably, this is why the correct answer here employs the infinitive instead.
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by arorag » Tue Sep 15, 2009 4:55 pm
lunarpower wrote:
hariharakarthi wrote:Buhttps://www.beatthegmat.com/posting.php?mode=quote&p=190171t my qn is,

Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that x and that y.

Is it correct?
this would be fine.

it would be considered awkward because there are two "that"s so close together. presumably, this is why the correct answer here employs the infinitive instead.
Why E is superior to A????
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by capnx » Tue Sep 15, 2009 8:20 pm
for parallelism (that... and that...) and also "its" in A is a little ambiguous, elephant or the amphibious animal?
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by vivek.kapoor83 » Tue Sep 15, 2009 9:24 pm
that suggest seems to be better than ' to suggest' , So will go with A..
Please help me in understanding why E is superior to A. i am not convinced
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by vaibhav.iit2002 » Wed Sep 16, 2009 10:01 am
A and E are close but I don't find even a single reason to prefer E to A whereas A seems ok because it uses "that...."
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by lunarpower » Wed Sep 16, 2009 10:23 pm
arorag wrote:Why E is superior to A????
(a) is actually INCORRECT, not just awkward, because of the way parallelism is indicated by the comma.

if you have a comma before a coordinating conjunction - as in "X, and Y" - then X and Y MUST be parallel clauses.

with this in mind, let's turn to (a):
Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal,
and
its trunk originally evolved as a kind of snorkel.

in other words, the embryologists have found evidence regarding the elephant's ancestry - but NOT about the trunk (this is just stated as a standalone fact).

if you remove the comma, then (a) becomes a viable answer.
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by kamalsinghy » Fri Sep 18, 2009 9:47 am
Hi Ron,

I understand from this question is that it is related to DICTION concept of OG.

Here embroyologists wants to suggest with the help of evidences, and they wanted to say two things that need to be in parallel grammatical structures.

The above construction is fulfilled by E only. My concept is that the given options may be grammatically correct but we should choose the option which the test-maker wanted to say without changing the meaning of given question.

Please comment if I am wrong somewhere.
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by lunarpower » Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:07 am
kamalsinghy wrote:Hi Ron,

I understand from this question is that it is related to DICTION concept of OG.

Here embroyologists wants to suggest with the help of evidences, and they wanted to say two things that need to be in parallel grammatical structures.

The above construction is fulfilled by E only. My concept is that the given options may be grammatically correct but we should choose the option which the test-maker wanted to say without changing the meaning of given question.

Please comment if I am wrong somewhere.
this is correct. specifically, the grammar of (a) has no real problems - but, as noted in my post above, it just doesn't say what it's supposed to say.

yes, context is every bit as important as grammar.
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