Absolute Phrase versus Run-on sentence versus Meaningless Clause

Dear kassim,
I'm happy to respond.

The word "thought" could be the past tense or the past participle of the verb "to think." If it is past tense, then it would be active and the subject would have to be something capable to doing the thinking. That's clearly not the case here.

Because it is not used as a past tense form, it must be a past participle. A present or past participle NEVER acts as a verb by itself. A participle needs an auxiliary verb to act as a full verb:
is thought
has been thought
had been thought
Those are full verb. Without the auxiliary verbs, a participle by itself can only be a modifier. Thus, "thought" has to be a noun modifier.

That means that this entire phrase is of the form [noun] + [noun modifier], which is the anatomy of an absolute phrase.
[its 60 square miles of water] [thought to be frozen from top to bottom]
Absolute phrases never appear in casual colloquial sources; they are slightly more frequent in sophisticated sources. That's why developing a habit of sophisticated reading is so important for SC success.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Yes it does.

Miles cannot think.


Thank you for your prompt reply. I learned a lot from your videos and still learning.

You are amazing. Thank you very much for your incredible explanations.

Let me rephrase my question. Do you think that the Gmat test could test both lack of preposition or absolute/apposite phrase on the same underlined portion?

I say that because my strategy follows you videos from Magoosh (Yeah! I am an user of them too!), that suggests to go first for the low-hanging fruit. Then, the first checking is Prounouns, specially their lackage. This strategy leads me to eliminate the apposite phrases then,opting for the least worse option and then the disaster is set.

Do you think that the approach should be different?

Dear felippemed,
I'm happy to respond.

Could the GMAT test a lack of preposition and absolute and appositive and everything else all in one underlined section? Of course! There is absolutely no combination of words or grammatical structures that the GMAT wouldn't test! The folks who write the GMAT specialize in handing us what we weren't expecting!

Yes, by all means eliminate low-hanging fruit, but have HIGH standards for what counts as "low-hanging fruit"! If something is an obvious mistake, then eliminate it, but always be suspicious that the GMAT is handing you some combination that you haven't seen before.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Thank you very very much Mike!

I hope that one day all the goodness come back to you as a payback for this wonderful donation!

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