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

[Erin]

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.

[goel_ar]

Erin, did you means 'second a present participle'?

Here is something more from google on particple..
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handou...ml#participles

They are both participles; even though the first is a past participle and the second a past, they can be correctly used in parallel.

[Erin]

Erin, did you means 'second a present participle'?

I sure did mean that. Sorry, I was going too quickly.

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.

[khushi2020]

Thank you, Erin. One last question, why can't we use 'differed' here?

[Erin]

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.

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

[viveksingh]

What is wrong with A. Will it be correct if it used "That" instead of "which"

[cc2005]

rsr80 take a closer look at the "C" choice ............lack of parallelism.

For more above check Erins's explanation highlighted in GREEN Color.

[khushi2020]

Erin, I am sorry to say, I just don't understand this. I read and re-read but I don't get why we use 'differing' and not 'differed'. Do you have some examples?

[Erin]

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.

[khushi2020]

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?
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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?')
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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

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

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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'.