A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is th

Hey All,

Everybody seems to have the right answer, but just to make it clear, adding a comma would NOT improve this sentence. Answer choice C is hoping to get you with a kind of shallow parallelism. We want to differentiate between the main verb "adhere", and the two subordinate verbs. To make this all one list changes the meaning for the worse.

Hope that helps!

-t

​​A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another, beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.


(A) beating in unison and adopting

(B) they beat in unison while adopting

(C) beat in unison, and adopt

(D) beating in unison yet adopting

(E) even though they beat in unison [color=#ed1c24]and adopt


The sentence contains superficial parallelism which is a trap.
Adhere, beat, and adopt cannot be taken as parallel verbs as they do not fall under the same list. Focus on the meaning and logic of the sentence.

The meaning of the sentence is that a peculiar feature of the circulatory system is that cells adhere to one another, (main action). How do they adhere to one another?- by beating in unison and/yet adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another (subordinate actions will take the -ing form)

Beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another cannot happen together. The meaning tells us that there is a contradiction. Hence, we must use “yet” and not “and”
D is correct.

Vishnupriya
GMAT SME

A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another, beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.


(A) beating in unison and adopting

(B) they beat in unison while adopting

(C) beat in unison, and adopt

(D) beating in unison yet adopting

(E) even though they beat in unison and adopt

Solution:

The point of the sentence is to show contradiction – so ‘and’ is the wrong conjunction
Eliminate A,B,C and E to get D

"peculiar" signals that the sentence should carry the original meaning and then deviate at a point.

D it is...."yet" is the word which does this and also is parallel

'Peculiar' is the key here. So you need to chose an option that brings out that aspect. D is the only choice that correctly provides that.

While I agree that D seems to be the most accurate answer, I think this sentence needs a comma after the word 'heart' to read: "A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart, the cells adhere to one another,..........

Otherwise, one could easily misconstrue the part of the sentence that reads "in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another" to be a description of an area of the heart where cells adhere to one another, giving the sentence a whole new meaning and possibly "B" as its answer.

Any thoughts anyone?

Here's my take on this question w/out repeating too much of what other people's said.

Since the last part of the sentence said, "beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.", we should see a contrasting triggering word to differentiate between "unison" and "exclusive of one another". Answer choices A, C, and E all used "and", for which it doesn't trigger the contrasting effect. Only B and D uses the right words - while (B) and yet (D).

Looking into B and D, B creates a common splice. In (B), "they beat in unison..." creates a complete sentence with a subject and a verb. In conjunction with the non-underlined sentence, the comma in between the two creates the grammatical error; therefore, (B) is incorrect. (D) fixes all the problems of this sentence.

In response to MrEasy's question with the comma after the word 'heart', I don't believe the comma is necessary since the material after the word 'heart' is a necessary clause, which requires no comma in between the two clauses. I hope I didn't confuse anyone with what I said. Also, just to go aside from that, people get bogged down by parts that are not underlined way too much; everyone should take what's given to them (the non-underlined portion) knowing that it's correct and don't question the non-underlined portion. I just wanted to point that side point out, though I'm pretty sure most people on this forum already knew that.

Since people have doubts about B and C :

Notice that there is no conjunction connecting the two parts of the sentence; so the second part can't be a clause!!! It can only function as participle modifiers.

B: Usage of they converts it to a clause. So this is out
C: beat is a verb, not a modifier. Only verbs in participle form can act as modifiers

For these reasons, B and C are out

The only confusing options are A and D.

Here the sentence is trying to bring out the contrasts... so we need yet. Hence A is out. D is the answer

Here's an excellent explanation given on Manhattan Prep website by Ron Purewal:

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... t3201.html

Just look at the original text especially the non-underlined part. It says ' and adopting'. Therefore we need another structurally parallel modifier before the 'and'. One can safely remove B, C, and E for using a verb' beat'.
It is now easy to converge on D. we want a contrast and that is shown by the word yet. A is gone.

The sentence in its original form tries to say that cells adhere to one another. The question asked is how? The answer is beating in unison but there is a little contrast because they adopt something that is exclusive (not included). So indicate the contrast in the sentence D fits best!


Hit kudos if it helps

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Can any one please explain the structure of this Question?
Thank you

Praveenksinha Highlighting subject in Pink, Verb in Blue, and Modifiers in Green

Option d

A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is

that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another, beating in unison yet adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.

Here the modifier in green is describing how the cells behave.
Why 'and' conjunction does not work? Here we need to express the feature that occurs simultaneously in the heart cells. Hence options such as A and C are eliminated.

To know more about how Verb-ing modifiers work and contribute to the overall structure and meaning of the sentence, please read the blog post in the link below:
https://e-gmat.com/blogs/verb-ed-modifiers-vs-verb-ing-modifiers/#:~:text=When%20verb%2Ding%20modifier%20is%20not%20separated%20from%20the%20clause,the%20context%20of%20the%20sentence.

A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another, beating in unison and adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.


(A) beating in unison and adopting
Usage of "and" does not help convey contrast.

(B) they beat in unison while adopting
Error: Comma Splice
Two independent clauses are separated by a comma. Though "while" is used to express contrast at times, "while" is also used to express simultaneous actions. The use of the word "yet" to convey contrast is clearer.

(C) beat in unison, and adopt
Error: Incorrect Parallellsim
The three activities - adhere to one another, beat in unison and adopt specialized orientations appear to be in parallel. This distorts the meaning as the latter two describe how the cells adhere to one another. This also misses the contrast.

(D) beating in unison yet adopting - CORRECT
Correctly conveys the desired contrast and modifies the preceding clause.

(E) even though they beat in unison and adopt
This definitely misses out on the contrast so we can eliminate it

Consider this sentence :

"I lifted the weight ,humming a tune"
here the verb-ing modifier modifies the entire clause before it .

"Donald duck won the contest , surprising everyone in the nation"
here the verb-ing modifier modifies the entire clause "donald duck won the contest"

Using the above analogy I eliminated option (D) - which turns out to be the right answer choice to this question

A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another, beating in unison yet adopting specialized orientations exclusive of one another.

So it seemed illogical to me .

CrackVerbal ExpertsGlobal can you please clarify my concepts which I used in the above ?

Here the verb-ing modifier = "beating .. yet adopting .." should modify the entire preceding clause right ?

Hey! Thank you for reaching out.

Let’s first tackle the concept that you mentioned.

As you rightly mentioned, the verb-ing modifier modifies the entire clause before it. Taking this one step further, when this modification happens, the modifier does either one of two things:

a) The -ing action is simultaneous with and subordinate to the main action
b) The -ing action is a direct and immediate consequence of the main action

Let’s look at the examples you presented.

"I lifted the weight, humming a tune."

Here the verb-ing modifier modifies the entire clause before it. Further, the -ing action is simultaneous with and subordinate to the main action

"Donald duck won the contest, surprising everyone in the nation."

Here the verb-ing modifier modifies the entire clause "Donald Duck won the contest". Further, the -ing action is a direct and immediate consequence of the main action.

In the case of the question you have referred to, the main clause is “A peculiar feature of the embryonic mammalian circulatory system is that in the area of the heart the cells adhere to one another”. The main clause is talking of one peculiar feature. This feature is that the heart cells adhere to one another.

The -ing modifier is modifying the main clause. It is referring to simultaneous actions that are subordinate to the main action. Also, if we look at this -ing clause two contrasting actions are being referred to – “beating in unison” and “adopting orientation that is specialized.” In other words, we need to show this contrast as well.

Many students end up choosing Option C because it looks so nice and clean – adhere, beat, and adopt. But there’s much more to this sentence than just this simple parallelism, and this is what the GMAT is expecting you to spot.

Option D modifies the main clause and, in that modification, presents two actions that are in contrast to each other.

I hope this answers your questions.

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