Found throughout Central and South America, sloths hang from trees by

Hey All,

Everyone got to the correct answer here for good reasons, but I just thought I'd give it the total treatment, because it's a REALLY interesting question.

313. Found throughout Central and South America, sloths hang from trees by long rubbery limbs and sleep fifteen hours a day, moving infrequently enough that two species of algae grow on its coat and between its toes.

(A) sloths hang from trees by long rubbery limbs and sleep fifteen hours a day, moving infrequently enough
(B) sloths hang from trees by long rubbery limbs, they sleep fifteen hours a day, and with such infrequent movements
(C) sloths use their long rubbery limbs to hang from trees, sleep fifteen hours a day, and move so infrequently
(D) the sloth hangs from trees by its long rubbery limbs, sleeping fifteen hours a day and moving so infrequently
(E) the sloth hangs from trees by its long rubbery limbs, sleeps fifteen hours a day, and it moves infrequently enough

The way to get great at Sentence Correction is to always be categorizing as you look at splits. In this case, the first split you'll probably notice is "sloths" versus "the sloth". Now, a split like this should TYPICALLY lead you towards the category of SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT, but if you look at all the verbs, they work fine (sloths hang and the sloth hangs). The only other category that might apply when you see singular and plural verbs in the splits is PRONOUNS. That's right! This is actually a common trope. So look elsewhere for a pronoun. This will get rid of A, B, and C, as many have said (because the pronoun "its" at the end can only go with singular "the sloth").

From there, you may notice PARALLELISM happening here. You should know this because you see a list (comma, comma, "and"). This is dangerous here, though not if you noticed the PRONOUN issue already. As many have stated, answer choice E is NOT parallel, because it puts the pronoun "it" before the third verb.

HOWEVER, even if that "it" weren't there, this would still be incorrect. Before reading my explanation of why, see if you can work it out for yourself. Ready?

Okay. So even though E would be very beautiful (three verbs in the same tense and form...what parallel!), it would not retain the original meaning of the sentence. When you have total parallelism like you see in answer choice C, it implies three things that happen in a serial fashion (one after the other, or at least all separately).

But the point here is that there IS a connection. Notice the last point, "algae grow...between its toes." Why would that happen? The only explanation is that the sloth sleeps and barely moves WHILE it is hanging. When you have that kind of construction, you want to use subordinate verbs to imply a subordinate relationship. Watch:

All day long he sits in that chair, reading the newspaper and sometimes falling asleep.

See how we use the -ing form of the verb (participles) to imply that the reading and sleeping occurs WHILE he sits. Because of this, we need the answer to look just as D does.

Hope that helps!

-t