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With his sub-four minute mile

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With his sub-four minute mile

by Mani_mba » Fri Oct 10, 2008 8:06 am
With his sub-four minute mile Bannister broke a psychological barrier, inspiring thousands of others to attempt overcoming seemingly insurmountable hurdles.

A. inspiring thousands of others to attempt overcoming
B. inspiring thousands of others to attempt to overcome
C. inspiring thousands of others to overcome
D. and inspired thousands of others to attempt to overcome
E. and inspired thousands of others to attempt overcoming
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by gmatmachoman » Fri Oct 10, 2008 8:15 am
mY Answer is (C).
plz post the correct answer.
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by vivek.kapoor83 » Fri Oct 10, 2008 9:10 am
IMO D.
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by gmat009 » Fri Oct 10, 2008 9:38 am
IMO C.
What's OA
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by GG04 » Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:21 am
IMO D
OA pls
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by stubbornp » Fri Oct 10, 2008 8:35 pm
imo b
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by Bidisha800 » Fri Oct 10, 2008 9:15 pm
(C)
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by Mani_mba » Fri Oct 10, 2008 9:41 pm
OA - D

Can somebody explain why the answer is D and not C ?
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by vivek.kapoor83 » Fri Oct 10, 2008 11:51 pm
coz inspiring seems to modify barrier ...so ABC out
E - akward const.
D is the rite ans
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by Mani_mba » Sat Oct 11, 2008 12:32 am
"Inspiring" modifies the preceding phrase rather than the immediately preceding noun "barrier". So IMO the act "...Bannister broke a psychological barrier" inspires thousands of others.

Let me know if i am missing something.
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by Stacey Koprince » Tue Oct 14, 2008 11:42 am
This is a bad question. Don't study it.

Now, nothing's wrong with D grammatically. But then nothing's wrong with B grammatically either. I found this on the original site and that site claimed that "inspiring" in B incorrectly refers to "barrier." "comma + -ing form" setups are not noun modifiers. They are adverbial modifiers, meaning they modify the entire preceding clause. And that's perfectly fine in this case.

You basically have two right answers here. In fact, if I had to choose, I'd say that B is better than D because B exactly maintains the original meaning that "breaking the psych barrier" leads to inspiring others, while D says that the "sub-four-minute mile" leads to inspiring others. Even there, though, it's next to impossible to choose, because the sub-four-minute mile is the thing that broke the psych barrier, so it's basically the same thing! There's not truly a meaning change there.

In a nutshell: don't use this question to study. It's not representative of the GMAT.
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