armie480

That's unfair! :crazy:

In affirmative sentences, indeed, there must be a subject and a verb, e.g. He goes to school. However, imperative sentences do not need subjects, e.g. Take a sit. Have a good weekend.

In this type of questions, 'the answer' is the wrong option. D is wrong, so it is the answer. A is correct, so it is not.

In the sentence Please open the window! which of the words would you treat as a subject? Right, none. The same in the sentence we discuss here. A is wrong by its meaning, not by its grammar. To achieve a particular result (i.e. to relieve pressure in the skull), one should do certain thing (i.e. inject a strong solution of pure glucose into the blood). To say 'you will' makes no sense in this context. It is not a description of what one will do (or will not do), it is what one should do to achieve certain result. No prophesying, but prescription! Another example. Please open the window to let some fresh air in! It is absolutely meaningless to reformulate it like 'To let some fresh air in, you will open the window'. What if I won't open the window? How can one be sure I will? :p

There is no passive here and should not be. The sentence offers an instruction what one should do to relieve pressure in the skull. Only the option D properly conveys the meaning.

Hi gmat_fighter A is correct. The answer is D: 'for complexity' -> 'for the complexity'.

Hi cyberagl The answer is D: [in order] To relieve pressure in the skull, inject a strong solution of pure glucose into the blood. This has nothing to do with parallelism.

Hi deren The second sentence sounds better, but the use of 'get out' in this context is misleading and incorrect. Say simply 'get'.

Hi hainp Who 'we'? :p For example, I have always thought that 'should it rain' is roughly equal to 'if it rains' (or, more literally, 'if it happens to rain'), not 'if it does not rain'. The meaning is the same. Grammar apart, why should a farmer miss good weather and not gather the harvest when it luckily does not rain?

Hi cepriego Your explanation is correct, but it should be 'if it rains' (not if it rain).

Hi gmat_fighter C: decay -> decays. C: into -> in. C: yet -> so. B: 'a phenomenon that accelerated'.

No. In fact, there is no rule like that. Wrong! This one is absolutely correct. Wrong. I have searched for a scientific explanation of this type of inversion, and here it is (M. Swan): When an adverbial expression of place or direction comes at the beginning of a clause, intransitive verbs are often put before thier subjects. This happens especially when a new indefinite subject is being introduced. The structure is most common in literary and descriptive writing. Under a tree was lying one of the biggest men I had ever met. On the grass sat an enormous frog. Directly in front of them stood a medieval castle. Along the road came a strange procession.

Hi Lyf B -> during sleep. The use of the infinitive after 'the first' is a special pattern one should know. E.g. 'she was the first woman in Britain to receive a Master's degree without having a BA' or 'he was the first to offer me help' etc.

This is the link to Erin's explanation of the Banana Rule.

Hi cyberagl I think you just have to accept that the inversion goes only like this. It is not that you change the word order as you wish, and bingo, you get an inversion. In fact, only particularly changed word order makes up certain meaning which other combination of words would not comprise. 'Came into the room a new student' sounds grammatically wrong to me, like a mess of words from which one needs to create a normal sentence (e.g. boring was lecture the' -> 'the lecture was boring'). In case you do not know Erin's wonderful explanation of inversion (I am sure you do), this is the link. Noooo! That's not English! :crazy:

Hi Daniel In this post I quoted from a grammar book about where to place adverbs.

Hi Ceman Thanks for your kind words. :) I have flicked away dust from my grammar book and found the following examples: Having so little time, there was not much that I could do.Being French, it is surprising that she is such a terrible cook. Nobody having any more to say, the meeting was closed. All the money having been spent, we started looking for a job. Simply put, the difference from 'normal' participle clauses is that in the latter, the participle clause is explicitly linked to a concrete word in the main clause, e.g. Being unable to help in any other way, I gave her some money. Used economically, one tin will last for six weeks. In principle, we can transform sentences with 'normal' participle clauses into longer ones with one subject (e.g. I was unable to help her in any other way and so gave her some money.) or transform them into if-clauses (e.g. If the tin is used economically, it [=the tin] will last for six weeks.). In pure misrelated participle clauses, there is no subject at all, e.g. Looking out of the window, the mountains seemed very close. The type of participle clauses we have in the sentence Sand is formed by the weathering and decomposition of all types of rock, its most abundant mineral constituent being quartz. requires that the sentence be transformed into two separate ones with different (!) subjects: Sand is formed. Quartz is the constituent. One can easily do similar transformations to the four examples I drew from the grammar book, e.g. Nobody had any more to say. The meeting was closed.

If I remember correctly, this is a misrelated participle clause. Btw, I mentioned this earlier in this thread. ;)

Hi ramy :eek: No, the sentence you offer is incorrect, i.e. insterting 'which are' is grammatically wrong! Again, wrong! The 'original' (longer) piece would in fact constitute two sentences and read: Sand is formed by the weathering and decomposition of all types of rock. its [The] most abundant mineral constituent [of sand] being is quartz. No, here it is not. If the sentence is broken into two separate sentences, as I showed above, it is clear that 'since' would be illogical here. Right, the main verb is in the main part of the sentence, but again, the verb you suggest for the clause - 'which are' - will not do.

C: its. This is a mislerated participle clause.

Hi akmkat_bd 'But the deposits' makes so sense, or rather, 'although [...] but' is redundant. The simplified sentence looks like that: 'Although all rocks contain iron, deposits consist of minerals.' If you use 'but' in the second part of the sentence, you do not need 'although' at the beginning of the sentence: 'All rocks contain iron, but deposits consist of minerals'. Using both 'although' and 'but' is too much for one sentence and it breaks the logic. Both 'are richest in' and 'are rich in' are grammatically fine. The only difference is in meaning. The author of the sentence talks about the deposits that are the richest in minerals, not simply rich in minerals as you suggest. If you were to construct your own sentence, you could well talk about all deposits that are rich in minerals, but you cannot say that 'the richest' is grammatically wrong. Michael, thank you for the correction, you are absolutely right. I just skimmed the sentences for obvious patterns and did not pay much attention to the meaning.

Hi akmkat_bd D: today jewelry -> today's jewelry. Agree. C: it once. Agree. Agree, and I would also say 'such as opaque', but I guess they only meant C to be wrong. B: but the deposits -> the deposits. I explained this question here. C: yet. B: a term applied. There must be a comma after 'midge'.

Hi lindaenvir For why C is wrong, you could check for example this thread. In brief, A only talks about some characteristics, whereas C is about all of them.

Hi lindaenvir I've checked earlier threads containing this question: http://www.www.urch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2584 http://www.www.urch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6926 http://www.www.urch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29384 They all agree that the key is actually A. :)

H'm, that's exactly what I meant about my relations with specific grammar terms in my first post in this thread. ;)