The economic forces which may affect the new public offering of stock

Bow down, bow down..
However,a completly new concept for me..
Elaborate a bit please..
Are you meaning to say that loosening(VERB)+ "a" =Noun ?
wow..i am in awe dude
So now between D and E is'nt D more concise??

Hello,

The economic forces which may affect the new public offering of stock include sudden downturns in the market, hedging and other investor strategies for preventing losses, loosening the interest rates in Washington, and fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized.

(A) loosening the interest rates in Washington, and fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized
(B) loosening the interest rates in Washington, and a fear of the company still being undercapitalized
(C) a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized
(D) a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and a fear of the still undercapitalized company
(E) a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and a fear that the company may still be undercapitalized

I was able to answer the question (the OA is "E"), however not sure what rule applies when choosing "a loosening" vs "loosening". In which case an article "a" is needed?

Many thanks,

superfreak

The problem with gerunds is that although they are classified as nouns, they have characteristics of a verb. To avoid ambiguities GMAT never considers a gerund to be a parallel structure to a noun.

Some of the ways to convert a gerund into a pure noun is by adding an article (“a”,”an”, or “the”) before the gerund.

“Loosening” is a gerund, whereas “a loosening” is a pure noun

And also because "hedging" is actually a noun.

The economic forces which may affect the new public offering of stock include sudden downturns in the market, hedging and other investor strategies for preventing losses, loosening the interest rates in Washington, and fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized.
there are four facts which should be parallel with each other. They are:
1.Sudden downturns in the market
2.Hedging and other investment strategies for preventing loss (note that hedging is not a ing form of verb but a strategy hence used as noun here)
3.loosening the interest rates in Washington
4.fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized.

Error Analysis:
3rd and 4th point -Loosening and fearing are not noun, which is required for sentence to follow parallelism.
POE:
(A) loosening the interest rates in Washington, and fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized - wrong for reason mentioned above
(B) loosening the interest rates in Washington, and a fear of the company still being undercapitalized - wrong as loosening is still not a noun also being undercapitalized is wordy
(C) a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized - Wrong as 4th part is still not in parallel
(D) a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and a fear of the still undercapitalized company - it corrects original mistake by making loosening and fear in parallel with other part of the sentence, but it also changes the intended meaning of the original sentence.(fear of the undercapitalized company or fear that company is still undercapitalized??)
(E) a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and a fear that the company may still be undercapitalized - Right- it corrects parallelism mistakes and also convey the intended meaning of original sentence.

how the heck am I supposed to know if loosening is a verb or noun... I am so bad at SC.

For the least you should know that the article 'a' can be used with noun only. That 'a' makes it a noun.

Posted from my mobile device

In this question, we need two nouns to maintain parallelism.

Another takeaway is that an article is only used before a noun.

When we scan the options, we can see that Options C, D and E have ‘a loosening of’ – which is what we want in the right option.

Eliminate Options A and B for this reason.

Option C has ‘fearing’ which is not a noun and therefore not parallel with ‘a loosening’. Eliminate.

Option D changes the intended meaning, even though it maintains parallelism. Eliminate.

Option E is the best choice.

Hope this helps!

I got E .
I guess
The economic forces include sudden downturns in the market, hedging and other investor strategies for preventing losses, a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and a fear that ...

All are noun phrases ..
hedging is not used as verb ..
similarly only loosening would have been verb+ing .. but .. a loosening . a phrase parallel to other element .
for the same reason fearing is incorrect ..

Please correct if I am wrong .

There is a lot of incorrect reasoning used in this thread to eliminate the answers.

Firstly, "loosening" & "fearing" are gerunds and NOT VERBS. Verb-ing is a simple gerund and is a noun in every way!
If you have rejected options A, B and C because you thought that they are verbs, then you are mistaken.

The parallelism that is tested in this questions is indeed for nouns
- Downturns (concrete noun)
- hedging and other strategies (concrete noun)
- loosening (simple gerund)
- fearing (simple gerund)

Here is the thing - a complex gerund ( "a" + verb-ing + "of") is considered parallel to concrete nouns.

Concrete nouns || to concrete nouns
Concrete nouns|| to complex gerund
Complex gerund || to complex gerund
Simple gerunds are not || to complex gerunds or concrete nouns or action nouns!

Options A, B and C have simple gerund || to concrete nouns. Hence they are incorrect. Option D changes the meaning.

E is disturbing. What company are we talking about here? First we generalise about some forces, but then as of a sudden we focus on ONE company. It should have been "a company" and not "the company".

In this sense D is a better choice because it retains the generalisation. "A fear of the undercapitalized company" implies that it could apply to any company.

OR - maybe I dont fully get from what perspective we are looking here. I thought the author takes the perspective of the public, of an outsider, but maybe it is from the perspective of the company owner (and thus E makes more sense).

Posted from my mobile device

Certainly, the perspective is from an outsider ( not from company). IN deciding : adjective Noun vs Noun that xyz
I make a choice based on :
Whether adjective makes sense with noun. e.g. blue sky - present quality, expensive watch , thick book --> quality that is embedded
whether action makes sense with noun e.g. : guy who ran fast , fear that can be overcame;; --overcame , fast ran --express action and doesn't embed quality in it

Soemtimes Verb can also be used as Adjective: confused coach vs coach who was confused:
In such sceanrio: both can be correct depending on sceanrion:
When talk about coach: The confused coach could not explain well. --> if i read : The confused coach could explain well. i can understand clearly the meaning that coach didn't explain well
When emphasis on his state: The coaches who are confused should not be allowed to give instructions. --if i read as: The coaches who are confused should not be allowed to give instructions. --> the meaning seems illogical/incomplete because confused is important to explain the meaning

Similarly for this question
here what is more important : fear or undercapitalized.
From meaning perspective: the focus is on undercapitalized So I prefer E over D .


AjiteshArun: Please share your comments whether my thinking is correct

Thanks!

Hi mSKR,

You're absolutely correct. There is a big difference between a fear of the still undercapitalized company and a fear that the company may still be undercapitalized. The intended meaning cannot be that someone fears the company itself. By the way, it's interesting to see that the nonunderlined portion of the sentence uses which without a comma.

If anyone wants to try a similar question: Geologists believe that the warning...

For the parallelism, shouldn't we consider "sudden" the adjective to be parallel with the rest of the elements in the list? Why are we considering downturns (noun) as the parallel element? How do we decide which word should be considered as the parallel element? Certainly doesn't seem like the first word.

The economic forces which may affect the new public offering of stock include sudden downturns in the market, hedging and other investor strategies for preventing losses, loosening the interest rates in Washington, and fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized.


(A) loosening the interest rates in Washington, and fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized

(B) loosening the interest rates in Washington, and a fear of the company still being undercapitalized

(C) a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and fearing that the company may still be undercapitalized

(D) a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and a fear of the still undercapitalized company

(E) a loosening of the interest rates in Washington, and a fear that the company may still be undercapitalized[/quote]


Hi AnishPassi Sir, Is gerund Parallel to verb or to Noun ? I did not get how we can recognize whether 'hedging and other investor strategies' is gerund or something else and how 'loosening the interest rates' is noun or gerund. Can you please clarify. thanks

Hello kunalc20,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your queries, we believe we can resolve your doubts.

Firstly, gerunds are present participles ("verb+ing") that play the role of a noun; thus, they must, naturally, parallel nouns.

Secondly, in this sentence we can tell that "hedging" is a gerund because it is joined with the noun phrase "other investor strategies" with conjunction ("and" in this sentence); since any elements linked by a conjunction must be parallel, "hedging" must be playing the role of a noun, meaning it is a gerund.

Thirdly, "loosening" is a present participle, but it is not a gerund, however, "a loosening" is a gerund. Please remember, present participles that are preceded by a preposition are gerunds. Further, in this sentence "a loosening" is the correct option, as it listed together with "hedging", which we have already established is a gerund, and all elements in a list must be parallel.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

I will help you out roughly here,
If there is a word ending in '-ing' and you don't see anything before it, then it is definitely not a verb.
such as,

Walking in the garden, he called the police.

here 'walking' is not a verb.

but when I say, "He was eating apple" so here eating is actually giving me a sense that the action is in progress and also I have a supporting verb before it which tells me the tense of the sentence. Therefore in the second case eating is a verb.

Now in the first case, Walking is actually a gerund, you can consider gerunds as nouns but they are actually not pure nouns.

Generally, in order to convert a gerund into a noun, we add an article before the gerund like 'a loosening'.
Always make sure that meaning is the king.

In the question above, hedging is not trying to tell you anything about the state of the action, rather it is telling you about an entity therefore it is a noun here.
Hope it helps.