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GMAT Sentence Correction: The growth of the railroads led to the abolition...


gmatready

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The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

 

(A) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

(B) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and which differed

© which were determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

(D) determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differed

(E) determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

 

 

 

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, "which were determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing".

 

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, "determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differed"

 

whats the difference between using ...which were determined... and ...determined...

 

is it that - when "which were determined" is used - that it applies to local times ?

 

what is similar explanation for the usage of "determined..."

 

This will be a great help.

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This is essentially a parallel structure question. It's a hard one, what I call "advanced parallel structure."

 

Let's take a look...

 

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

 

(A) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

(B) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and which differed

© which were determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

(D) determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differed

(E) determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

 

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local

times, "which were determined by when the sun reached the observer's

meridian and differing"

 

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local

times, "determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian

and differed"

 

whats the difference between using ...which were determined...

and ...determined...

 

is it that - when "which were determined" is used - that

it applies to local times ?

what is similar explanation for the usage of "determined..."

 

This will be a great help.

A couple of important grammar points here. Let's start with the "original" (without ellipsis, reduction, etc.) sentence:

 

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which were determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and which differed from city to city, and [the growth [of the railroads [also] led] to the establishment of regional times.

 

This is what the "original" sentence would look like. You will notice that:

 

which were determined

 

is parallel with

 

which differed

 

These two parts are adjective clauses and can be "reduced" such that they become adjective phrases (or participial phrases in this particular case):

 

determined

 

is still parallel with

 

differing

 

Okay, that's the first point.

 

The second point is this:

 

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was ==> were determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

 

because "were" is the verb for the relative pronoun "which," which replaces the head noun "times."

 

And I think these two rules should give you answer choice (E).

 

HTH!!

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Erin,

 

Could you please explain to us why which differed can be short to differing, why not to differed

 

Thanks.

 

She Lee

 

Erin,

 

Never mind. I think I know now.

 

Since "local times" is the subject of the verb "differ", we should not use passive voice "v+ed".

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  • 2 weeks later...

This one's easy to explain, but unfortunately, it's also easy to miss!

 

I read your explanation, and I think that you are essentially right, but I just want to make sure.

 

(Now I'm going to copy some information from another post.)

 

5. The architecture exhibited in the Empire State Building and conveyed us an idea of the prevailing attitudes of the day is important for the historical and cultural value it represents.

 

It's a bit tricky to answer these questions sometimes, but the main idea behind whether to choose the -ing form or the -ed form this:

 

When we reduce a verb to its -ing or -ed form, we must look at one and only one thing: whether the noun that it will modify is the subject or object of that verb.

 

The -ing form is used for DOING the action, which means SUBJECT, which means ACTIVE voice.

 

The -ed form is used for RECEIVING the action, which means OBJECT, which means PASSIVE voice.

 

Before I go further, let me offer two examples that will make things clearer as we go along:

  • speaking person (the -ing form)
  • spoken words (the -ed form)

In this type of question, we always have two elements:

 

  • a particple, which is either in the -ing or -ed form
  • a noun that is modified by this participle

So, using the previous examples, speaking modifies person and spoken modifies words.

 

The next step is to realize that these participles all come from verbs--speaking and spoken both come from the verb speak.

 

Now, using these examples, and applying them to the rules I mentioned at the beginning, we will notice that if we made a sentence, person would be the subject of the verb speak and words would be the object of the verb speak. Using this procedure, we can figure out whether should use the -ing or -ed form of a participle that modifies a noun. And that's it!!

 

Of course, this is easy when the vocab is easy, and we often get confused when we are using difficult vocab because we sometimes don't know whether something is the subject or the object of the verb, but this procedure that I have explained is the only sure way to get the right answer.

 

In our sentence here, which replaces times, and times is the object of determined, but it is the subject of differed.

 

In other words, we have something like this:

 

...somebody determined times...

 

but

 

times differed...

 

I know some of you have learned that we should only use the -ing form only for actions that are ongoing/in progress in the present, but that's simply not true. We do occasionally use them correctly for past actions that were ongoing/in progress.

 

Finally, everybody gets confused simply because the -ed form appears in the second one, making people think the -ed form should appear again when it's reduced. We need to realize that there is truly no connection (for our purposes here in GMATland, anyway :D !!!!) between the two; it's pure coincidence that each has the -ed form in it!!!

 

If you stick to the rules that I just wrote, you'll be okay.

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Woha...what an explaination! Thanks, Erin. That was very informative. I was wondering if you could comment on my another post, titled "Quant. Words". Although, I know some of 'em but I am sure that your explaination will give me a better insight. Thanks in advace.

 

 

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  • 1 year later...
  • 9 months later...

Hello folks,

I just joined the forum and very much a beginner with things GMAT related. I hit upon this superb post by my getting carried away with my excitement about testmagicforums.

 

My question is..

 

Iam still not clear why answer choice E instead of C. In other words whats wrong with the "which were". If this is a very basic question just as a beginning novice would ask and you cant bother to answer in detail could you atleast direct me to a thread that has already discussed the role of "which" in gmatland.

 

thanks

rsr80

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  • 2 months later...

1. The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

 

(A) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

 

(B) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and which differed

 

© which were determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

 

(D) determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differed

 

(E) determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

 

I know this question has been discussed exhaustively in the past. Still, I don't understand why D is incorrect. OA is E.

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This is the part I don't understand. Can someone explain? How is determined parallel with differing? Also the local times are now abolished so why will we use present tense?

 

"which were determined

 

is parallel with

 

which differed

 

These two parts are adjective clauses and can be "reduced" such that they become adjective phrases (or participial phrases in this particular case):

 

determined

 

is still parallel with

 

differing"

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This is the part I don't understand. Can someone explain? How is determined parallel with differing?
They are both participles; even though the first is a past participle and the second a present, they can be correctly used in parallel. ;)

 

Also the local times are now abolished so why will we use present tense?

Participles are considered adjectives, and they don't have tense:

  • The dinosaurs living on the Earth...
  • My friend living in Berkeley...
  • Any future time-traveler hoping to save time...

They are all correct phrases. ;)

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Erin, did you means 'second a present participle'?
I sure did mean that. Sorry, I was going too quickly. :blush:

 

I'll edit my post now.

 

On a side note, I seem to recall seeing a grammarian somewhere saying that present and past participles couldn't be paralleled. However, here we go by what GMAT says, not what others say. ;)

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Thank you, Erin. One last question, why can't we use 'differed' here?
That's a very commonly asked question, and I would ask that you read my explanation of the difference between the present participle and past participle.

 

The quick, but perhaps not too easy to understand, explanation is that differed can be used only as a past tense verb, not as a past participle, as intransitive verbs do not have a past participle; to use differed here would be to violate the rule of parallel structure by paralleling a verb and a participle. :doh:

 

Don't worry, I explain in a much easier way in the post I linked to above. :D

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How about this:

 

 

 

If D were written like this:

which was
determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differed

it would be fine. Then determined and differed would be parallel. But the way it's written:

determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differed

determined is a past participle and differed can only be a verb because differed can't be used as a past participle.

 

 

Let me try to create a simpler version of this sentence:

I didn't really like the experimental movie,
which was filmed mostly when it was night and lasting
more than three hours.

 

(D) filmed mostly at night and lasted

(E) filmed mostly at night and lasting

 

What's the best answer here? Unless I'm typing too quickly, I've created a pretty close version to the above sentence, and I hope it's clearer in this example what the best answer is. :)

 

And here I will focus only on the part that I think is confusing you. :)

 

First, past participles and past tense are two different things, even though they look exactly the same if the verb is a regular verb (differed/differed). If the verb is an irregular verb, they probably do not look the same (ate/eaten).

 

Second, not all verbs have past participles. Intransitive verbs do not. For example, you can say the cat died, but not the cat *was died. Similarly, you can say the two ideas differed, but not the two ideas *were differed.

 

Perhaps it will be easier to see the difference if we use an irregular verb:

  • The cat ran.
  • The cat *was run.

If that doesn't clear up your doubts, could you kindly explain to me in detail what's confusing you? It'll be a lot easier for me to explain if I know what's causing you trouble. :)

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Hi Erin,

 

Thank you for your attention and your time. I did put in more effort to understand this better again! Please check the following...

 

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

 

Here the verb is 'led'...so it is 'led to the abolition of local times and to the establishment of regional times'. So the phrase 'which....city' is a participle phrase?

------------------------------------------------

Correct option - determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

Here 'determined' is the past participle (used because times is the object of determined as it answers the question 'what was determined when the sun reached the meridian?') and 'differing' is the present participle (used because times is the subject of differed as it answers the question 'what differed from city to city?')

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

If D were written like this:

 

which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differed

 

it would be fine. Then determined and differed would be parallel

Are 'was determined' and 'differed' verbs here? Is this still a participle phrase? Is 'times' still the object of 'determined' and subject of 'differed'?

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't really like the experimental movie,
which was filmed mostly when it was night and lasting
more than three hours.

 

(D) filmed mostly at night and lasted

(E) filmed mostly at night and lasting

 

What's the best answer here?

 

E seems correct. It could also be 'which was filmed mostly at night and lasted'.

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Sorry for the late reply; I've been kind of sick for the last week or so. :sick:

 

I'm going to try to answer the questions one by one so I don't get confused.

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

 

Here the verb is 'led'...so it is 'led to the abolition of local times and to the establishment of regional times'. So the phrase 'which....city' is a participle phrase?

Actually, it's not a phrase (phrases lack a subject and a verb) but a clause (clauses are basically sentences--they have a subject and a verb), but I'm not so sure that this is terribly important at the moment.
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Correct option - determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

Here 'determined' is the past participle (used because times is the object of determined as it answers the question 'what was determined when the sun reached the meridian?') and 'differing' is the present participle (used because times is the subject of differed as it answers the question 'what differed from city to city?')

Yes, you seem to have the idea of subjects and objects. :tup: Notice your test questions are using passive (What was determined...?) and active voice (What differered...?). This way, if it makes sense to you, should work just fine. :)
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If D were written like this:

 

which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differed

 

it would be fine. Then determined and differed would be parallel

Almost! You're right that we need a finite verb in here to make the elements parallel, but it's not determined and differed that are parallel; it's was determined and differed (they are both verbs/verb phrases).

 

Is this still a participle phrase? Is 'times' still the object of 'determined' and subject of 'differed'?
A participial phrase, to put it simply, is just a group of words that starts with a participle (eating only once a day, taken just before bedtime, lost in the woods, spending more money than he should, etc.). And yes, the subjects and objects don't change. :)

 

Nice job! It seems you've figured these things out for yourself, but feel free to ask again for clarification. :grad:

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The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

 

© which were determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing

Ok so my head is spinning from looking at this thread again and again. Can somebody explain to my why E, the official answer, is better than C?
If C were correct as written (which is possible grammatically), it would mean this:

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times,
which were determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and
which were
differing
from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

In other words, which were determined would be parallel with which were differing; or, if it were "reduced," determined and differing would be parallel.

 

I think you'll agree that the verb tense of which were differing is incorrect, so C is out. :)

 

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