Hello, everybody! I'm going to try to get you rapid-fire answers to some of the queries above. Here goes!
Quote:
Hi guys,
Wanted to check if someone could help me clear up how I may properly distinguish between an independent clause and a subordinate clause. Would the underlined portion of the below question be a subordinate clause and what exactly makes this subordinate?
Sixty-five million years ago, according to some scientists, an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest slammed into North America, an event that caused the plant and animal extinctions that mark the end of the geologic era known as the Cretaceous Period.
This is a great question. In general, as an earlier post said, an independent clause should be able to stand alone as a sentence; in a sense, it should
feel complete when you read it on its own. Grammatically speaking, an independent clause needs to have a subject and a conjugated verb
and express a complete thought, though that last bit gets complicated: what exactly constitutes a "complete thought"? It can be hard to say. As such, it's often easier to learn the words that signal dependent and subordinate clauses. Some examples of each can be found below:
Dependent clause words (relative pronouns): that, which, who, whom, whose, and (in some cases) where and when. These words tend to introduce clauses that function as adjectives (noun modifiers) or as nouns themselves.
Subordinate clause words (subordinating conjunctions): as, because, although, while, if, and (in some cases) before, after, where, and when. These words tend to introduce clauses that function as adverbs and respond in some way to the main (independent) clause of the sentence.
Notice that if you try to take a sentence and put one of these words at the beginning, it suddenly doesn't express a complete thought even though it still
has a subject and a verb:
I went to the store. <-- complete sentence
That I went to the store. <-- sentence fragment
Because I went to the store. <-- sentence fragment
All that said, to answer your question about the underlined portion, see if it feels complete when you read it alone. With any luck, it doesn't--it sort of leaves us hanging. On a technical level, this is because the underlined portion is an appositive (a noun used as a modifier) with two dependent clauses (each starting with
that) attached to it. It's being used to describe the asteroid's slamming into North America in more detail.
mayuri1404nayak wrote:
Is the first sentence in passive form - if yes, then how?
--the labor market in France has not been operating according to free market principles
The first sentence is
not in passive form but rather present perfect continuous/progressive form. To be in passive form, it would need to use a past participle (such as
has been operated). However, to be clear, even if the first clause is using the active voice, the second clause can correctly use the passive voice (much as two clauses in the same sentence can have verbs in different tenses--more on this below).
gloomybison wrote:
Hi
generis DmitryFarberin B, why do we consider a sentence that begins with "instead" an independent clause? isn't instead a conjuction?
For instance; my uncle hates chocolate cake, though he loves chocolate.
Here we don't need to use a semicolon
would you explain the difference please?
Thank you
This is essentially because
instead and
though are grammatically different. As
Vetrick said,
instead is being used as an adverb here; as such, it functions much as "however," "therefore," "consequently," or "as such" would after a semicolon, and much like those words, it is not grammatically equipped to function as a conjunction. This means that
instead can't be used with a comma alone to join two clauses.
Though, on the other hand, is a subordinating conjunction, meaning it can be attached to the main clause with a comma.
GMATist1 wrote:
Does choice (E) incorrectly uses Present Perfect tense?
Shouldn't it be using Present Perfect continuous instead?
In the first clause "France has not been operating"
therefore isn't the following better?
"instead it has been functioning in a stifled manner "
This is a good question. In a perfect world, the verb form used in both clauses might be equivalent just for the sake of neatness; however, there's no grammatical rule saying that two verbs in different clauses within a sentence (or even within the
same clause within a sentence) need to have the same tense. Verb-tense choices are almost always governed by the intended meaning of the part of the sentence in which they appear rather than by parallelism. For a good example of this, check out this
Official Guide question:
Images of Hindu deities. As you'll see, the correct answer pairs the present indicative active-voice verb
date with the past indicative passive-voice verb
were fashioned. There are several other official examples that do similar things. It's very common to want verbs to be alike when they appear in the same sentence, but basically they never really
have to be.
I hope all that helps!
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Ryan Starr
Manhattan Prep
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GMAT, and
GRE Instructor
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