The bowerbirds of Australia derive their name from the fact

The bowerbirds of Australia derive their name from the fact that the males build elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs to attract females, decorating them with flowers and other vegetation in a display of courtship.

a) the fact that the males build elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs to attract females, decorating them with flowers and other vegetation

b) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs that the males build and decorate with flowers and other vegetation in order to attract females

c) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs, decorated with flowers and other vegetation that the males use to attract females

d) the fact that the males build elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs, having decorated them with flowers and other vegetation, to attract females

e) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs that are built by the males and decorated with flowers and other vegetation to attract females

the fact that is wordy
A and D is out
In C decorated modifies twigs
B is best answer

To best of my knowledge, GMAT doesn't prefer 'in order to' to 'to'.

techiesam wrote
daagh



Techie! You must look at the grammar and logic of the context

1. Grammar: in the context, the verb build and participle having decorated are not parallel
2. Meaning: Having decorated implies that the act of decoration was done earlier than building the Bowers. This isn't logical.
When there is a such a big hole, why bother about trivial things such as passive voice and GMAT's likes and dislikes.

I rejected B because for following reason

b) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs that the males build and decorate with flowers and other vegetation in order to attract females

That is right next to noun twigs so it should modify twigs. Although if there was comma in between (shown as below), then I would have picked B without any doubt.

b) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs , that the males build and decorate with flowers and other vegetation in order to attract females

Can you someone please shed some light on this matter

MadaraU wrote:


MadaraU
Hi


Original B: The bowerbirds of Australia derive their name from the fact that the males build elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs that the males build and decorate with flowers and other vegetation in order to attract females, decorating them with flowers and other vegetation in a display of courtship.

Your version: The bowerbirds of Australia derive their name from the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs, that the males build and decorate with flowers and other vegetation in order to attract females, decorating them with flowers and other vegetation in a display of courtship.

You can see the meaning goes awry with the introduction of the comma before that. When you put the comma, then the content between the two commas is rendered inessential and should not alter the intended meaning of the main sentence. If you remove the modifier, then the sentence reads:

The bowerbirds of Australia derive their name from the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs decorating them with flowers and other vegetation in a display of courtship.

Now, who is decorating whom or what? It looks as though sticks and twigs or bowers of sticks and twigs are decorating the birds (them)
We can now see how weird the meaning changes. Logically, we know that the birds cannot build sticks and twigs but only bowers. Therefore, B is quite ok

Stem contains the pronoun "them" but it is not grammatically clear whether the pronoun's antecedent is "bowers of sticks and twigs" or "females."
Option B removes them and use structures
B also rewrites the sentence to make it clear that the name derives from the bowers and not from the fact of building them

Official Explanation (Courtesy: Manhattan Prep)

The original sentence contains the pronoun "them" but it is not grammatically clear whether the pronoun's antecedent is "bowers of sticks and twigs" or "females." Logically, we know that the antecedent is "bowers", so we need to find a replacement that makes this clear. Moreover, the bowerbird does not derive its name from the fact that it builds bowers, but from the bowers themselves.

(A) This choice is incorrect as it is the same as the original sentence.

(B) CORRECT. This choice rewrites the sentence to make it clear that the name derives from the bowers and not from the fact of building them, and it also eliminates the pronoun "them" and instead refers to "structures" to make the relationship clear.

(C) This choice does not make it clear that the males build the bowers and decorate them. Instead, it seems to suggest that the bowers exist on their own and that the male uses only the flowers and vegetation to attract females.

(D) This choice uses the phrase "having decorated them" improperly. It is not necessary to use "having" in this context because the sentence describes an ongoing event, not one that occurred in the past.

(E) This choice is in the passive voice, which is not preferable to active voice when a grammatical active version (such as B) is also offered. Moreover, the choice implies that the males only build the bowers. Since the original sentence clearly indicates that the males also decorate the bowers, this choice changes the meaning unacceptably.

why in option B "THAT" is refering to Bowers.
But
In option C , that is referring to sticks and twigs.

Rakesh1987

prags1989

B) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs that the males build and decorate with flowers and other vegetation in order to attract females
Here that refers to bowers of sticks and twigs. this sentence says males build bowers which comprise of sticks and twigs.
Correct.

C) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs, decorated with flowers and other vegetation that the males use to attract females.
Here that refers to flowers and other vegetation. This sentence says that the males uses the bowers decorated with flowers and vegetation and says nothing about who builds bowers or who decorates them. So this sentence loses an important information given in the original sentence. Hence, incorrect.

Note: That can refer to anything in different sentences; sentence correction doesn't require that each and every key word remain the same, it only requires that the meaning remains the same and that the grammar be correct. In option B, that is correctly referring to bowers. Even in sentence C, using that for referring to some other noun is not wrong, but as the usage changes the meaning of original sentence, C is wrong. I hope it solves your query.

Please hit +1 kudos if the explanation helped.

The bowerbirds of Australia derive their name from the fact that the males build elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs to attract females, decorating them with flowers and other vegetation in a display of courtship.

a) the fact that the males build elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs to attract females, decorating them with flowers and other vegetation

b) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs that the males build and decorate with flowers and other vegetation in order to attract females

c) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs, decorated with flowers and other vegetation that the males use to attract females

d) the fact that the males build elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs, having decorated them with flowers and other vegetation, to attract females

e) the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs that are built by the males and decorated with flowers and other vegetation to attract females

Explanation:

A- Antecedent ambiguity for 'them',use of the fact is both awkward and wordy.

B-Correct answer which is both concise and clear in structure.Maintains the intended meaning of original stem that bowerbirds built and decorated bowers.....use of 'in order to' also betters the structure.

C- changes meaning as it removes the information that males built the bowers and conveys that bowers existed on their own.

D-use of 'having' decorated is incorrect as we are talking in present context.Also use of 'the fact' is both awkward and wordy.

E-passive construction and changes meaning as built and decorated are not parallal indicating that males only built the bowers.


Kindly award the kudos if you like the explanation.?

Regards
Atul Pandey

Posted from my mobile device

Hello,

According to the meaning of the sentence here, the bowerbirds derive their name from the action that males do, i.e.: "males build elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs to attract females"

The original sentence is very clear about this.

B, C and D change the intended meaning by saying, the bowerbirds derive their name from the elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs.

Moreover, use of 'them' in the original sentence seems logical to me, reason being:
It is mentioned in the sentence that males build the bowers to attract females. Now before attracting females males cannot decorate females. That is not logical.
Thus 'them' cannot refer to females. It can only refer to 'bowers'. So use of 'them' seems ok.

My questions:
1. Am I missing something in my pronoun interpretation?
2. We see that the answer is B, but B changes the intended meaning. Shouldn't we give meaning more preference?

The original version actually isn't too terrible, and it's clear that "them" refers to "bowers."

In fact, the biggest issue with the original version is that the closing modifier works with the main clause in a convoluted way. For one thing, the first version conveys that "building bowers with stick and twigs" results in "decorating" the bowers.

Overall, the original version just isn't well constructed.


The idea that the correct version has to convey the same meaning the original version conveys is a myth.

The meaning conveyed by the original version is no more important than the meaning conveyed by any other version, and the correct version has only to effectively convey a meaning that makes sense.

Thanks for the explanation.
I have one follow up question about the point you mentioned about the modifiers:
The modifier "decorating them..." is modifying the preceding clause.
Can't the modifier "decorating them..." represent the how aspect of "the males build elaborate bowers of sticks and twigs to attract females"?
And "decorating them..." also makes sense with the subject "males", (since males decorated ...).

e.g: The king ruled the kingdom, working relentlessly for his people.
Here "working..." modifies the previous clause by presenting the how aspect.

The meaning conveyed in this case is a little strained, because the clause presents a rather specific action "build .. of sticks and twigs to attract females." So, modifying that specific action with "decorating" doesn't really make sense.

Let's do the same with your example to see what goes wrong.

The king ruled the kingdom by handing out riches and intimidating anyone who got in his way, working relentlessly for his people.

See how the meaning is now strained? The meaning conveyed by the clause is now rather specific. So, tacking on "working relentlessly" doesn't make as much sense as it did when the meaning conveyed by the clause was more general.

In c, it looks like the "that male use" is modifying vegetation.

Hello experts,
sayantanc2k AndrewN generis AjiteshArun @DmitrytFarber


I think i am making some mistake in understanding the intended meaning. please correct me.

Normally we say someone deriveS name because he has done some thing or does something on regular basis. so here option A is saying the same thing.but it is incorrect. Option B is literally saying that the bowerbirds derive the name from bowers itself . it should be from the fact that they do XYZ. Right?

Thanks and Regards

Hello kadamhari825,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can resolve your doubt.

It is perfectly acceptable to say that something "derives its name" from a noun rather than from an action. For example, "The Midway atoll derives its name from its position halfway between the U.S.A and Japan."

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team