Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions

for parallism - that emotions.............. that feeling should be correct so A and D out.
then Survive and Procreate should be parallel...E is out..
feelings needs the verb so reflect... C is correct

Here is how I did it:

1) The answer has to be like the following to maintain parallelism: "that emotions... and that feelings" (A-D out)

2) In the remaining options there is a split between reflect and reflecting. If we use "reflecting" the second part of the sentence won't be a full sentence.

Hence answer is C

Hi there,

What's wrong with the parallelism in A ?

Cognitive scientists maintain that emotions evolved.., and feeling are products...

emotions evolved is parallel to feeling are products

Am I missing something? in addition, reflecting the interpretation seems like a correct VERBing modifier.

Thanks!

In Option C if there would have been no "that " before feelings. Would that still be a right choice ??

Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions, which are biological functions, evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in hostile environments ..........................

Now Lets Explore the options , given -

A) procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting - Parallelism not maintained , Incorrect.

B) procreate, and that feelings, as products of the conscious mind, reflecting - Parallelism not maintained , Incorrect.

C) procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflect - Correctly modifies Feelings as products of concious mind.

Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions , which are biological functions, evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in hostile environments procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflect the interpretation of emotions.

D) to procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, which reflect - Parallelism not maintained , Incorrect.

E) to procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflecting - Parallelism not maintained , Incorrect.

Hence IMO (C)

Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions, which are biological functions, evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in hostile environments and procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting the interpretation of emotions.

A) procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting
B) procreate, and that feelings, as products of the conscious mind, reflecting
C) procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflect
D) to procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, which reflect
E) to procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflecting

OA: C

My answer was A and I'm not sure why it is wrong:

Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting the interpretation of emotions.

There is no error of parallelism here, because 1 element (emotions) has a modifier and the second element does not. This is not an error. The only issue that remains is the verb-ing modifier here. is "reflecting the interpretation of emotions" wrong here? it describes how emotions and feelings are produced by the brain, or the how they act as those products.

Also, is maintain a reporting verb or not? because if it is, it needs "that" when followed by a clause. because if maintain is not a reporting verb, then the meaning becomes very weird! Scientists maintain emotions that are x and feelings that are y! They hold on to those feelings and motions? huh?

I am uber confused here! would appreciate your help!

[quote="mosesrah"]Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions, which are biological functions, evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in hostile environments and procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting the interpretation of emotions.

A) procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting - out because that is missing
B) procreate, and that feelings, as products of the conscious mind, reflecting - verb is missing after that
C) procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflect - correct
D) to procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, which reflect- out because that is missing
E) to procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflecting - verb is missing after that

Hope my points are correct

Perhaps you missed the presence of the verb evolved with the noun emotions. So, I don't believe we can interpret this sentence the way you've suggested.

The deconstruction of the sentence is:

Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions evolved....and feelings are....

Also can you confirm that you encountered this sentence on GMATPrep?

your points are correct if you assume that are products of the conscious mind modifies both emotions and feeling.
But if you assume that "emotions" has a modifier, but feelings do not (which is perfectly fine, parallel elements do not need parallel modifiers), then your point for choice C doesn't hold, and choice A will be a better choice. This scenario looks more sensible because if "maintain" is used to express opinion, it should be followed by that., otherwise it sounds like scientists posses emotions and feelings...although reflect the interpretation of emotions will also be incorrect.

100%. It is a part of the extra question pack.

The text doesn't look right. let me confirm tonight when I'm back home.

to answer your first point: evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in hostile environments and procreate can modify biological functions. this makes even more sense to me... emotions evolved... biological functions evolved.. the latter is much more logical I believe.

Hi, which are biological functions is a non-essential clause. So, to expose the core of the sentence, it is always a good idea to ignore the non-essential. So, the core of the sentence is:

emotions evolved in the nervous system...

If the intent of evolved in the nervous system was to modify biological functions (in other words, if evolved was intended to be used as a past participle and not as a verb), then I would have expected that there should not have been any comma after biological functions. So, the construct should have been:

which are biological functions evolved in the nervous system...

Now, it is very clear that evolved in the nervous system is indeed modifying biological functions. But this is not the case here.

Hi Moses,

Thanks for posting your question.

Let's begin from the beginning. Let's first understand the intended meaning of this sentence.

Meaning Analysis:

The sentence begins by saying that the present day cognitive scientists believe in something. They believe something about emotions, which are biological functions. What about the emotions that they believe in? They maintain that emotions evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in environments not suitable for them and reproduce. Then we see "and". It says that there is something else as well. This part of the sentence tells us that "feelings" are different from emotions. Feelings are products or conscious mind, and hence reflect the interpretation of emotion.

So basically, the scientists maintain that emotions and feelings are two different things and that is proven by the description provided. Hence, there is a parallelism in the sentence between "emotions evolved..."and "feelings are...".

Now, firstly, these two entities are not grammatically parallel because "emotions" is preceded by "that" and "feeling are..." is not. Basically the structure should be:

... scientists believe:
that emotions... and
that feelings...

However, there is not "that" before "feelings". Now this absence of thus isolates this "feelings" part from the sentence. Structurally, it does not remain the part of the list anymore. And this is the mistake you are also doing in your analysis. If "feelings" is not the part of the parallelism, then why has it been mentioned side by side to emotions? If "feelings" part is not the part of the parallel list, then why the sentence says that scientists believe something and feelings are something. Does these two parts as Independent information even make logical sense? No. That's why it is very important to understand that how emotion is different from feelings has been presented through a parallel list.

So now the Error analysis will be easy.

Error Analysis:

The sentence lacks the intended grammatical parallelism because "that" is present before "emotions..." but missing before "feelings...".

PoE:

A) procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting: Incorrect for the reason stated above.

B) procreate, and that feelings, as products of the conscious mind, reflecting: Incorrect. There is no verb for the subject "feelings" and hence, it cannot be parallel to the clause "that emotions evolved..."

C) procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflect: Correct. Presence of "that" makes "that feelings..." parallel to "that emotions...". Also note that feelings reflect..." is better than cause-and-effect "comma + reflecting...".

D) to procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, which reflect: Incorrect
i. "to procreate" is forced to be parallel to "to help". This forced parallelism distorts the intended meaning of the sentence. The original sentence says that emotions evolved to help animals survive and procreate. This choice says that emotions evolved to help survive and to procreate.
ii. Same error as in Choice A.
iii. "which" illogically modifies "the conscious mind".

E) to procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflecting" Incorrect.
1. Same "to procreate" error as in Choice D.
ii. There is no verb for "feelings".

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
SJ

Thank you very much for your explanation! I main problem is that we can actually read the sentence like this:

Scientists maintain that feelings and emotions are products of...... Here there are two parallel elements feelings and emotions, one has modifier the other one doesn't. This is grammatically correct.
However, as we discussed above, we can only rule choice A out because of misplaced modifier . If evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in hostile environments intends to modify emotions as a verb-ed modifier, then it is misplaced. If it acts as a verb, then answer choice A is wrong.

Also, can you please clarify the use of "that" here? shouldn't it be a part of the reporting verb? otherwise it sounds like scientists posses emotions that are x... and feelings that are y...

Thank you

egmat - I have the same doubt. Why cant we consider evolved and reflecting as modifiers. And that way the sentence will read "Scientists maintain that feelings and emotions are products of the conscious mind" ?

Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions, which are biological functions, evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in hostile environments and procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting the interpretation of emotions.

A) procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting
B) procreate, and that feelings, as products of the conscious mind, reflecting
C) procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflect
D) to procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, which reflect
E) to procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflecting

Pure case of parallelism. Questions like this gives me a sense of bliss. Yes my life is pathetic LOL

Ok, so look at the mail question "Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions, which are biological functions, evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in hostile environments and procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting the interpretation of emotions."

That emotions goes along with that feelings , so we have B C and E. Eliminate rest. again, Which are biological functions . Brings us down to E and C. Between them only C is grammatically correct

+1 if you like my answer