The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which

Hi Shailendra,

You have arrived at the correct answer choice. But I'm afraid, the reasons you have given to eliminate choices A and B are not convincing.
Let's wait for a few more analyses. Then I will post the detailed solution with solid reasons to eliminate choice A and B along with other two.

Thanks.
Shraddha

This question is about parallelism and modifier.

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

(A) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing
Wrong.
- Parallelism problem. "which was ...." is a clause --> not parallel to "differing" which is Verb-ing modifier.
- "was" is wrong because "local times" is plural.

(B) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and which differed
Wrong. Simple past tense "differed" is not correct. Because "local times" always differ from city to city.

(C) which were determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing
Wrong. Same as A. Clause and Verb-ing modifier are not parallel.

(D) determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differed
Wrong. Verb-ed "differed" is not correct because local times themselves differ from city to city. --> should use Verb-ing modifier.

(E) determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differing
Correct. "determined by" and "differing" are modifiers and are parallel. Hence, E is correct.

Hope it helps.

I'm having a difficult time understanding why we need to use "differing" instead of "differed". My gut tells me that it needs to be differed to stay parallel but all other sources says differed. Could you elaborate? Is it because it still presently differs even though the times were abolished?

With D, the sentence would be:

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, determined by when the sun reached the observer’s meridian and differed from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

Believe it or not, determined and differed are not parallel! determined is used as (what is called) past participle, while differed is a simple past tense verb.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses a simple 2-step framework of how to differentiate between participles and verbs, their application and examples in significant detail. If someone is interested, PM me your email-id, I can mail you the corresponding section.

In D, ‘differed from’ is not a past participle; It is simply a past tense verb.

To find out whether an ‘Verb+ed’ word is past participle or past tense, use this thumb rule: Ask who is the agent of the “determined by”; the word ‘by’ indicates that the local times were determined by somebody other than the local times. However, note that the word ‘differed’ is not followed ‘by’ but by ‘from’. The agent of doing ‘differed’ is the local times. They themselves did the act of differing. So differed is a direct verb of the subject local times.
One can see that ‘determined by’ is phrase while (local times) differed from is a clause. So, both of them put in the same sentence cannot be parallel after conjunction ‘and’

Jabrah

Can you please explain, how (Differed) here is verb and not a Verb-ed modifier.
what is noun entity and how you calculated it to verb

What's wrong with the below sentence.
The growth of the rail roads led to the abolition of local times, differed from city to city. Here differed is modifying time , so does the determined

Thanks for your question mbaprep2016

Do you how to distinguish between a verb in the past tense and a past participle?

Here is a quick answer by GMAT guru, Ron:

"Past-tense verbs and participles have meanings that are essentially complete opposites -- the former suggests that the noun actually does the action, while the latter suggests an action done to the noun -- so, if you can't reliably tell them apart, then you must not be thinking much (if at all) about the meaning of the words.

for instance:
robots made (= verb) today's breakfast --> this is something that the robots did.
millions of robots made (= participle) in korea are shipped to the u.s. each year --> this is something done to the robots."

If it's not clear let's continue our discussion

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times,which was determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

(A)which was determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing
(B)which was determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and which differed
(C)which were determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing
(D)determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differed
(E)determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing

A very good question to test modifiers.
My take on the question:

Clause 1: The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times
Subject: Growth
Verb: led
Clause 2: which was determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing from city to city
Subject: which (refers to times—Plural)
Verb: was (singular) Incorrect
What was confusing here is the use of ‘differing from city to city’
After reading the explanations, it was clear that it referred to the ‘times’.

Can we use ‘which differed from city to city’ in the above context?
If anyone could answer this.

In correct Option E, two participial phrases are joined by "and":
1. "determined ....": past participle
2. "differing...": present participle
Both these participle modifiers refer to "times".

If the second item were "which differed...", then a parallelism error would arise - past participle would then be parallel with a relative clause - such usage is incorrect.

Hello,

Can anyone please explain. Why is the usage of "which" incorrect in this sentence? I have this doubt from quite some time now, when to use which while defining a preceding clause and when not to. Can someone please explain the differences.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
K K

Dear Experts,

I have 2 concerns regarding option E: The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

1. The presence of the comma after local times.

The sentence can be broken into 2 as follows:

a. The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian, and to the establishment of regional times. - This is ok.

b. The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times. - The usage of comma + present participle modifies the entire clause as per MGMAT SC. This changes the intended meaning.

I feel the comma must be removed for this sentence to be correct.


2. The usage of present participle.

The sentence begins with "The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times" to state that the local times have been abolished whereas "differing from city to city" implies that the local times are differing in the present. The sentence seems to illogically suggest that the abolished (past) local times are differing from city to city (present).

Experts, please let me know if there are any errors in my reasoning?

Thanking you in advance.

Hello reachskishore,


I do understand that you posted this query some time back. Nonetheless, I would like to present an answer to your question.


The word which is a noun modifier. It is NOT a clause modifier because technically, which is a type of pronoun that can only refer to nouns and pronouns.

In general, which, or for that matter an noun modifier, modifies the noun entity that immediately precedes it. However, at times, which, or other noun modifiers, can refer to a slightly far away noun if the context of the sentence demands so.

We have a very detailed article that deals with when a noun modifier can modify a slightly far away noun. The article can be reviewed in the following link:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/noun-modifiers-can-modify-slightly-far-away-noun-135868.html


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Hello louisbharnabas,


Your query is pretty old, but I would still like to clarify your doubts.

Let's bring in the official sentence with the correct answer choice inserted in it: The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.


1. Please note that the entire modifier determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing from city to city is placed between two commas. If were to remove this modifier from the sentence, then we would remove the comma before differed and the comma after city. Hence, there is no question of differing working as comma + verb-ing that modifies actions and not nouns.


2. The thing to bear in mind is that modifiers do not have ant tense of their own. It is only the verbs that have tense. The modifiers go by the tense used for the main verb of the sentence. Since in this official sentence, the main led is written in simple past tense, both the modifiers determined and differing takes the same tense.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Hello Jat,


It is clear from the context of the official sentence that we need the verb-ed modifier determined to refer to the preceding noun local times.

Now we need another modifier for local times that can be parallel to determined. The word differed most definitely looks like an appropriate choice because both these word look similar in structure as they both end in "ed".

However, differed does NOT work as a verb in the context of this official sentence. It works as a simple past tense verb because the local times themselves differed from city to city. A verb can never be parallel to modifier. Hence, differed use of differed is incorrect in this sentence.

We have authored an article named ED FORMS - Verbs or Modifiers that shows hot to distinguish between a simple past tense verb and a verb-ed modifier. The article can be reviewed in the following link:https://gmatclub.com/forum/ed-forms-verbs-or-modifiers-134691.html

Since we need a noun modifier that can be parallel to determined, we need differing, a verb-ing modifier that correctly modifies the noun local times. Although determined and differing have different structures, they are perfectly parallel because they both act as a noun modifier. At e-GMAT, we call such lists with not similar looking parallel elements Imperfect List. We have an elaborate article on the topic that can be reviewed in the following link: https://gmatclub.com/forum/parallelism-imperfect-list-142791.html


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

I knew the reason that determined is a modifier and should be parallel with modifier not with verb .but I was not not able to guess "differed from" is a verb. How to check that ?
the test I used to check it is a verb is place" differed from" closer to local times and see if any action is done. in my understanding there was no action and just a modifier. Went with D and my answer was wrong.

Hello r19,

I will be glad to help you with this one.

In Choice D, the word differed is a verb because the local the local times themselves differed from city to city.

Let me present a simple example sentence to make the usage clear.

Local time differs in each of the six time zones in the Unites States.

My project differs from yours in its approach towards problem solving.


In both the above-mentioned sentences, differs acts as a verb.

Same is the usage of the word in simple past tense in Choice D. Hence, this choice stands incorrect because the modifier determined and the verb differed cannot be grammatically parallel.

Choice E rectifies this error by replacing the verb differed with the modifier differing.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

The choice above is wrong because the relative clause modifier that describes the local times has a passive voice verb (was determined) on one side of the parallelism marker 'and' but has a present participle (differing) on the other side. AS we know, a verb and a modifier do not go together. On the other hand, look at the correct choice E. The verb "was determined" has been replaced by a past participle (determined). Now, this choice is correct because there are two participles now on either side of the conjunction 'and'.
At the same time, look at choice D. Now you have 'determined' which is a past participle and modifier, while the word 'differed' is not a past participle but an active voice verb. Therefore, D is not parallel.

Let us come to brass-tacks about modifiers and their modifyees.
Also as we know that:
Theory - When we have an independent clause followed by a participle phrase, the participle phrase modifies the subject of the sentence. Then why not in the sentence at hand?

The critical question is, after the independent sentence, what kind of a participle phrase is following.

1. Is it a present participle modifier (Verb+ing) with a comma before?
Example: France won the 2018 FIFA World Cup, defeating Croatia 4-2.

Here defeating is adverbial modifying France's winning (not just France alone)


2. Is it a present participle without a comma before?
Example: The 2018 FIFA World Cup was a tame affair with France defeating Croatia 4-2.
Here the present participle is adjectival modifying the noun France, just before.

Takeaway: the present participle when separated by a comma need not modify the subject. It need not also modify the subject when not separated by a comma.

Let's now dissect past participles;

When a past participle (talked, frozen, eaten, kept, etc) follows an independent clause, it tends to modify the most logical noun despite its placement with a comma or without a comma.

Example:
In any language, idioms have to come to stay, perpetuated by centuries of traditions.

Here 'perpetuated' modifies the subject idioms because there is no other logical noun to modify before.

2. The Anasazi settlements at Chaco Canyon were built on a spectacular scale with more than 75 carefully engineered structures, of up to 600 rooms each, connected by a complex regional system of roads.

Here the past participle 'connected' does not modify the subject settlements, but modifies its nearest logical noun 'structures'.

Unless one builds up a thorough and full understanding, modifiers can be very tricky.

We must practice sentence patterns with various types of modifiers