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[700+] Kaplan Question

by voodoo_child » Wed Jun 08, 2011 1:06 pm
During and immediately after the California gold rush, the way for a merchant to generate the most profit was to move a limited amount of scarce goods to San Francisco as quickly as possible, rather than to carry larger loads more slowly, determining the design of the clipper ship.

a) to carry larger loads more slowly, determining
b) to carry larger loads more slowly, a situation that determined
c) carry larger loads more slowly, which determined
d) slowly carry larger loads which determined
e) carrying larger loads more slowly, and this was a situation in determining

Isn't b) a run-on sentence ? ".....loads more slowly, a situation that determined...."
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by cans » Wed Jun 08, 2011 4:46 pm
IMO C
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by smackmartine » Wed Jun 08, 2011 5:07 pm
IMO B

During and immediately after the California gold rush, the way for a merchant to generate the most profit was to move a limited amount of scarce goods to San Francisco as quickly as possible, rather than to carry larger loads more slowly, determining the design of the clipper ship.

a) to carry larger loads more slowly, determining (the subject to which "determining" is referring is confusing)
b) to carry larger loads more slowly, a situation that determined ("a situation that determined.." is an appositive phrase describing the whole situation during the gold rush)
c) carry larger loads more slowly, which determined (which modifies slowly)
d) slowly carry larger loads which determined ( should start with "to" to be parallel with "to move a limited amount of scarce" - basic structure x rather than y. x and y should be parallel in structure)
e) carrying larger loads more slowly, and this was a situation in determining (wordy and awkward , its not clear that what is "carrying" referring to.)
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by smackmartine » Wed Jun 08, 2011 5:18 pm
@voodoo_child , please underline the part of the sentences. If its not underlined, it takes unnecessary seconds to find the underlined part. Also there are some quick strategies that can be used if we know the underlined portion.This might not even take more than 15-20 seconds to spot the answer in some cases.

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by atulmangal » Wed Jun 08, 2011 6:51 pm
IMO B

c, d, e parallelism errors.

Op A, determining is modifying the whole preceding clause suggesting that the subject of the preceding clause "the way" actually determining something

Op B is correct and there is no run on sentence error.

Look, this part

a situation that determined the design of the clipper ship.

if this sentence would be an independent clause (IC) then yes there would be a run on sentence error but this is not an IC.
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by [email protected] » Wed Jun 08, 2011 8:58 pm
IMO B
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by Sanjay2706 » Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:30 pm
IMO B.

I think the inclusion of 'a situation that determined' links the sentence which otherwise looked like a run-on sentence.
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by g.shankaran » Sat Jun 11, 2011 12:12 am
IMO B
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by Ashley@VeritasPrep » Sat Jun 11, 2011 1:39 pm
Good posts above. Yes, "a situation" is an appositive here, and the situation = that "the way for a merchant to get the most profit was to move a limited amount of scarce goods to SF as quickly as possible."

A shorter example would be something like "I broke my leg, a situation that forced me to stay home." Here, the situation is that I broke my leg. Or "The power supply to the whole building suddenly failed, an event that caused nearly everyone to panic." The event is that the power supply suddenly failed.
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by voodoo_child » Sun Jun 12, 2011 4:59 pm
Ashley@VeritasPrep wrote:Good posts above. Yes, "a situation" is an appositive here, and the situation = that "the way for a merchant to get the most profit was to move a limited amount of scarce goods to SF as quickly as possible."

A shorter example would be something like "I broke my leg, a situation that forced me to stay home." Here, the situation is that I broke my leg. Or "The power supply to the whole building suddenly failed, an event that caused nearly everyone to panic." The event is that the power supply suddenly failed.
Thanks Ashley. I am trying to understand two things :
On the GMAT, how can I not get into the trap of "run-on" sentence. In your example above, what's the difference between :
(i) I broke my leg, a situation that forced me to stay home. (appositive)
(ii) I broke my leg, forcing me to stay at home. (,+ing form - modifying the act of breaking the leg)
(iii) I broke my leg, and I stayed at home (I am using ,and form here just to prevent it from being "run-on sentence" ) I am a little bit confused. :(

Appreciate your response...

Thanks
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by Ashley@VeritasPrep » Sun Jun 12, 2011 5:57 pm
Hi Voodoo,
i) I broke my leg, a situation that forced me to stay home. (appositive)
(ii) I broke my leg, forcing me to stay at home. (,+ing form - modifying the act of breaking the leg)
(iii) I broke my leg, and I stayed at home (I am using ,and form here just to prevent it from being "run-on sentence" ) I am a little bit confused.
Actually, all three of the sentences you suggest are fine. The third one doesn't communicate the exact same thing, because it doesn't express that the fact that you broke your leg is WHY you stayed at home; breaking your leg and staying at home could just be two totally unrelated things you happened to do that day. But grammatically, they're all fine (and logically, they're all fine, too -- (i) and (ii) just have a different connotation from (iii)).

Let's look at the original sentence again for a minute (I've chopped off the very beginning, because it's irrelevant here):

The way for a merchant to generate the most profit was to move a limited amount of scarce goods to San Francisco as quickly as possible, rather than to carry larger loads more slowly, determining the design of the clipper ship.

I wouldn't say that the problem with that option is that it's a run-on; I wouldn't even call it a run-on. It's just that here, it's ambiguous just what "determining" is modifying, since there are so many verbs that precede it -- it could be modifying the fact that the way to generate the most profit was to..., or it could be modifying the verb "to move" (i.e. if the meaning were something like "The best strategy was to move a limited amount of goods, determing the design of the clipper ship as you did so" -- logically wacky, but grammatically possible)..., or it could be modifying the verb "to carry" (i.e. if the meaning were something like "The best strategy was to move a limited amount of goods, rather than to carry large loads while determining the design of the clipper ship" -- again, logically wacky, but grammatically possible). Inserting "a situation" and transforming the modifier into an appositive gets rid of all that ambiguity.

In your sentence (ii), there IS no ambiguity, because there's only one thing that "forcing" could be referring to, so your sentence doesn't suffer from any of the confusion this other sentence does. So I don't think you'll get trapped :)
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