daagh wrote:
Quote:
Knocked from the asteroid belt, an asteroid that comes close to Earth may be captured by Earth's gravitational field, ultimately spiraling inward and becoming fully consumed during its fiery descent through the atmosphere while acting like a "falling star,” or becoming redirected at high speeds along a new trajectory.
a)spiraling inward and becoming fully consumed during its fiery descent through the atmosphere while acting like a "falling star,” or becoming redirected
b)having spiraled inward and having become fully consumed during its fiery descent through the atmosphere acting as a “falling star,” or having become redirected
c)spiraling inward, becoming fully consumed during its fiery descent through the atmosphere, and acting as a “falling star,” or be redirected
d)having spiraled inward and become fully consumed during its fiery descent through the atmosphere, acting like a “falling star,” or being redirected
e)spiraling inward and being fully consumed during its fiery descent through the atmosphere as a “falling star,” or be redirected
In this jumble of modifiers and symmetrical parallelism, the critical factors are:
1. The first arm of the symmetry of parallelism is the entire phrase starting with the participle of verb+ing --ultimately spiraling inward and becoming fully consumed during its fiery descent through the atmosphere while acting like a "falling star,”. Therefore, on the other side of the parallelism marker -- ‘or’, it should be another present participle of verb+ing form.
On that note, 'spiraling' and 'becoming' are parallel. Be redirected as in C and E are wrong.
The phrase ‘having spiraled denotes a wrong sequence that the asteroid may be captured after having spiraled inward. This is against the intended meaning. Therefore, B and D are gone. Only A is correct with an intact parallelism
Hi Daagh,
I too first thought A to be the answer at first glance...
But had to relook due to following reasons..
1) Act like vs act as..act like is generally used with animate object and not with inanimate objects, and we are talking of inanimate objects..
A and D can be eliminated..
2) parallel issue..spiralling, becoming and acting are parallel..
therefore
spiralling inwards, becoming...., and acting is the correct form..
A,B,D and E can be eliminated..
3) Meaning issue..All three activities
spiralling inwards, becoming...., and acting are actions of the preceding clause
be captured by Earth's gravitational field..
so is correctly used this way..
Again C is only left..
4) the final error is the parallelism between captured by earths atmosphere and redirected..so C is correctly conveying parallelism in two different activities..
Knocked from the asteroid belt, an asteroid that comes close to Earth may
be captured by Earth's gravitational field,
ultimately spiraling inward, becoming fully consumed during its fiery descent through the atmosphere, and acting as a “falling star,”or
be redirected at high speeds along a new trajectory...
SO C should be correct..