Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress that made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also established the Library of Congress.
A. Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress that made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also established
B. The act of Congress, which was approved April 24, 1800, making provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also established
C. The act of Congress approved April 24, 1800, which made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., and established
D. Approved April 24, 1800, making provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., the act of Congress also established
E. Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also establishing
that is, indeed, an independent clause. the problem is that it's a very long independent clause - the 'middleman' itself is longer than most actual sentences. that's a doozy.
remember that you should either condense or eliminate these interloping constructions (modifiers, prepositional phrases, and the like) so that you can better understand the structure of the sentence. if you do that here, you get the following:
the act that did X ... also did Y
that's an independent clause.
--
the big problem with choice e is that it strips 'the act of congress' of a necessary modifier - so that, instead of saying 'the act of congress that did blah blah blah', it just says 'the act of congress' - as if congress has only ever performed one act in its history. that's an unacceptable (and absurd) change in meaning.
Great question, Eyunni! Choice (E) in its entirety:
Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also establishing the Library of Congress.
The bold text is the non-modifer "core" of the sentence, of the form "X made Y, also establishing Z." You may note that the comma before "also" is required after Washington, D.C., therefore is independent of the question you and the original poster raise about the final clause.
There are two potential problems/fixes to this core.
1) Parallelism: "X made Y and established Z" would be better.
2) Improper modifier form: "X made Y, establishing Z" is grammatically correct, as you suggested.
But I think #2 creates an unintended meaning: The act of Congress made provision (for moving to D.C.), thereby establishing the Library of Congress. It wasn't the move to D.C. that created the Library of Congress. Rather, the act did both of those things.
Jayant, the GMAT ignores your quant performance when dishing out verbal problems. Even if you had it on good authority that this is a harder than average question (good luck getting that data!), you have to realize that our description of the process is an oversimplification and that you are not money-back-guaranteed to get a 50.00 percentile problem on number 1. :) The big thing to keep in mind is that for all the talk about how the CAT algorithm works, any thought you give to it during the test represents a less than optimal allocation of your mental energies on the test. Ignore it, and just focus on the question at hand..
@rajinikanth
Participle modifiers can come before or after the noun but must touch the noun, where touching can include being connected to the noun through a chain of other modifiers also modifying that noun. The big reason you can eliminate B and D is because of the ambiguity they create that could have been fixed by some simple changes in wording like consolidating modifiers and making them parallel rather than in series..
Yes, there is a problem in answer choice C regarding what the "which" refers to. i find that although the GMAT is not 100% consistent on this point, a "which" is almost always tied to the specific word that occurs right before the comma, regardless of any other noun options present in the sentence. i place this in my category of "99% rules", ones that might bite you once if you take the GMAT 17 times but that you can apply with confidence if you don't have 5 minutes to diagram the sentence fully and investigate every nuance..
B doesn't need an "in" any more than the other answer choices do; they all use the same construction for the date, so you should ignore the date itself here..
Kudos for pulling examples of incorrect GMAT grammar from UK newspapers! i find The Economist to be an excellent source for issue spotting. :) Anyway, yes you need a "that" in order to introduce a subordinate clause. Otherwise you're bringing in a second SV combination into the top level of the sentence. This is exactly analogous to incorrect choice E in V90 on the OG..
And as for the "had not" versus "has not", it could be either depending on the context and the intent of the author. Try it both ways in your mind and see if you can envision a back story for each of those two possibilities. This is also a good idea to try with any situations where it looks like parallelism fails, such as the sloths question (#124). You want to get rid of something that isn't parallel only if you are sure that the items in question MUST be parallel..
(d) is incorrect because it purports to modify "the act of congress" with nonessential modifiers (i.e., modifiers that are set off by commas). if that's the case -- i.e., if these modifiers are allowed to be nonessential -- then that means "the act of congress" can stand on its own.
that would imply that there has only been one act of congress, ever.
not good.
another example:
The course offered on Wednesdays will fit nicely into your schedule. --> in this example, "offered on wednesdays" is an essential modifier, signifying that there are also other courses (and so we need the essential modifier to narrow the possibilities to one).
Offered on Wednesdays, the course will fit nicely into your schedule. --> this time we have a nonessential modifier, indicating that "the course" can stand on its own. this doesn't make sense unless there is only one course.
A. Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress that made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also established
B. The act of Congress, which was approved April 24, 1800, making provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also established
C. The act of Congress approved April 24, 1800, which made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., and established
D. Approved April 24, 1800, making provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., the act of Congress also established
E. Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also establishing
that is, indeed, an independent clause. the problem is that it's a very long independent clause - the 'middleman' itself is longer than most actual sentences. that's a doozy.
remember that you should either condense or eliminate these interloping constructions (modifiers, prepositional phrases, and the like) so that you can better understand the structure of the sentence. if you do that here, you get the following:
the act that did X ... also did Y
that's an independent clause.
--
the big problem with choice e is that it strips 'the act of congress' of a necessary modifier - so that, instead of saying 'the act of congress that did blah blah blah', it just says 'the act of congress' - as if congress has only ever performed one act in its history. that's an unacceptable (and absurd) change in meaning.
Great question, Eyunni! Choice (E) in its entirety:
Approved April 24, 1800, the act of Congress made provision for the removal of the government of the United States to the new federal city, Washington, D.C., also establishing the Library of Congress.
The bold text is the non-modifer "core" of the sentence, of the form "X made Y, also establishing Z." You may note that the comma before "also" is required after Washington, D.C., therefore is independent of the question you and the original poster raise about the final clause.
There are two potential problems/fixes to this core.
1) Parallelism: "X made Y and established Z" would be better.
2) Improper modifier form: "X made Y, establishing Z" is grammatically correct, as you suggested.
But I think #2 creates an unintended meaning: The act of Congress made provision (for moving to D.C.), thereby establishing the Library of Congress. It wasn't the move to D.C. that created the Library of Congress. Rather, the act did both of those things.
Jayant, the GMAT ignores your quant performance when dishing out verbal problems. Even if you had it on good authority that this is a harder than average question (good luck getting that data!), you have to realize that our description of the process is an oversimplification and that you are not money-back-guaranteed to get a 50.00 percentile problem on number 1. :) The big thing to keep in mind is that for all the talk about how the CAT algorithm works, any thought you give to it during the test represents a less than optimal allocation of your mental energies on the test. Ignore it, and just focus on the question at hand..
@rajinikanth
Participle modifiers can come before or after the noun but must touch the noun, where touching can include being connected to the noun through a chain of other modifiers also modifying that noun. The big reason you can eliminate B and D is because of the ambiguity they create that could have been fixed by some simple changes in wording like consolidating modifiers and making them parallel rather than in series..
Yes, there is a problem in answer choice C regarding what the "which" refers to. i find that although the GMAT is not 100% consistent on this point, a "which" is almost always tied to the specific word that occurs right before the comma, regardless of any other noun options present in the sentence. i place this in my category of "99% rules", ones that might bite you once if you take the GMAT 17 times but that you can apply with confidence if you don't have 5 minutes to diagram the sentence fully and investigate every nuance..
B doesn't need an "in" any more than the other answer choices do; they all use the same construction for the date, so you should ignore the date itself here..
Kudos for pulling examples of incorrect GMAT grammar from UK newspapers! i find The Economist to be an excellent source for issue spotting. :) Anyway, yes you need a "that" in order to introduce a subordinate clause. Otherwise you're bringing in a second SV combination into the top level of the sentence. This is exactly analogous to incorrect choice E in V90 on the OG..
And as for the "had not" versus "has not", it could be either depending on the context and the intent of the author. Try it both ways in your mind and see if you can envision a back story for each of those two possibilities. This is also a good idea to try with any situations where it looks like parallelism fails, such as the sloths question (#124). You want to get rid of something that isn't parallel only if you are sure that the items in question MUST be parallel..
zhuyujun wrote:
Can anyone tell me why D is wrong?
The core structure is Approved..., making provision for...., the act of Congress also established....
Any error in it? Pls help to explain, thanks!
The core structure is Approved..., making provision for...., the act of Congress also established....
Any error in it? Pls help to explain, thanks!
(d) is incorrect because it purports to modify "the act of congress" with nonessential modifiers (i.e., modifiers that are set off by commas). if that's the case -- i.e., if these modifiers are allowed to be nonessential -- then that means "the act of congress" can stand on its own.
that would imply that there has only been one act of congress, ever.
not good.
another example:
The course offered on Wednesdays will fit nicely into your schedule. --> in this example, "offered on wednesdays" is an essential modifier, signifying that there are also other courses (and so we need the essential modifier to narrow the possibilities to one).
Offered on Wednesdays, the course will fit nicely into your schedule. --> this time we have a nonessential modifier, indicating that "the course" can stand on its own. this doesn't make sense unless there is only one course.
