Pankaj0901 wrote:
zhanbo - could you please help me understand why in Option E "lacking" is not a "noun" acting as a gerund? The explanation says that "lacking an ability" is a verb, but I am not able to completely grasp why it is not a noun.
I often get confused in parallelism questions involving noun, gerund and '-ing' verbs.
Vercules wrote:
The dinosaurs in the late cretaceous period failed to survive on the planet because of factors such as inadequate food supplies, harsh weather, and an inability to adapt to the changing environment.
(A) an inability
(B) that they were unable
(C) because they were unable
(D) being unable
(E) Lacking an ability
Pankaj0901, I agree with you that gerunds function as a noun. Gerunds are more like ad-hoc nouns. If they are used more frequently, many dictionaries will eventually treat them as nouns. For example:
financing,
funding,
making, and
recycling are all standard dictionary entries as proper nouns.
There is actually an entry for "lacking" in many dictionaries as well, not as a noun but as an adjective.
So, gerunds are ad-hoc, or second-class, nouns. For the purpose of parallelism when other items (of a list) are proper nouns, the best answer had better also furnish a proper / first-class noun. For parallelism, the closer the match, the better.
Besides, we find an additional merit in (A): shorter is better. (E) uses more words with no additional benefits.
Ultimately, I think that test makers justify their answers by pointing out that this option is preferred by most reputable essayists. (E) does sound a bit abrupt. But we test takers may not have the acute appreciation of test makers. By insisting on close parallelism (with a bias in favor of economical construction), we should be able to deal with this question just fine.