The stars, some of them at tremendous speeds, are in motion just as th

Hello, warrior1991. The use of being in option (A) does not automatically rule out the sentence. I was expecting a gerundive phrase to then serve as the subject of a second independent clause, but that second clause never came. To be clear, being is used as a gerund in (A), but nothing builds off of it. I see that others have drawn attention to the lack of a subject in the latter portion of the sentence as grounds for dismissal, but it is actually the lack of a verb that keeps us from considering (A) (since the gerundive phrase cannot serve as a subject without a verb). The following sentence, which adopts a related construct to the one above, would be valid. I will take the liberty of drawing attention to the gerundive phrase acting as the subject and the verb that helps form the predicate of the second independent clause.

Everyone who eventually reaches adulthood goes through adolescence, yet being a teenager often proves exceedingly difficult in the moment.

If we break down the latter part of (A) in a similar fashion, you can see what I mean:

being so far away from the Earth that their apparent positions in the sky do not change enough for their movement to be observed during a single human lifetime

Yes, that is right: the entire phrase, embedded clause and all, could be thought of as the subject of a potential second independent clause, but no verb appears to tell us what being... achieves. That is, we need to know what being so far away... does to call the whole thing a proper subject. (Change only operates within the embedded clause.)

I hope that helps. If you have further questions, feel free to ask. Thank you for thinking to ask me about this one.

- Andrew

Please can someone elaborate on the usage of 'being' on GMAT. It's very confusing.

Hi sudeshpatodiya

You may find this post useful.
https://gmatclub.com/forum/ornithologis ... l#p2288730

Hi sudeshpatodiya, few scenarios when the usage of being is correct are:

i) being in a progressive form (depicting the meaning in the process of)

ii) When being is used as a gerund (noun form)

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses usage of "being", its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

In (B), "they" after but should refer back to the subject of the previous clause "planets" which is wrong, then how com "they" is referring to "stars"?

Hi Lakshya, stars (and not planets) is the subject of the previous clause the stars are in motion.

lakshya14

(B) Like the planets, the stars are in motion, some of them at tremendous speeds, but they are

The Subject of the previous clause is 'stars' and not 'planets'. "They" is referring to "stars"

"Like the Planets" is modifier modifying the stars.
Try to remove the 'Like the Planets' part. The remaining part still makes sense. "The stars are in motion, some of them at tremendous speeds; but they are"

AjiteshArun

it seems that 'some of them at tremendous speeds' is the modifier of 'the stars are in motion' not 'Like the planets' at all. so, 'them' indicates only noun of modified part (the stars are in motion), and ultimately 'them' refers to 'they' in the next clause. so, 'they' or 'them' is not ambiguous. am i right in my way of thinking?

Hi TheUltimateWinner,

Think of it as a "signal" to the reader. Even if something like this is reasonably clear, it is still just a "signal". Of course, if you've seen a rule that says that a pronoun cannot refer to another element in the sentence, I'd be happy to take a look at that.

Hello experts,

Can we say that, in addition to the errors pointed out by various experts, usage of "being" is also an error because it seems like it refers to temporary state. It seems like the stars are being far away for some time and then they'll not be far away.

Is my understanding wrong?

And can you please explain WHY is the modifier "some of them at tremendous speed" modifying "the stars are in motion" and not "starts"? I mean how would the meaning change if it modifies "stars"?

Thank you in advance!

ChiranjeevSingh VeritasKarishma GMATNinja AjiteshArun AndrewN

Hi ashmit99,

It'd be great to see more opinions on this, but this type of being actually looks like the "because (they are)" being to me ("being so far away" ~ "because they are so far away"). Of course, this is not a complete clause, which is the primary reason to remove option A.

As far as the placement of some of them at tremendous speeds goes, it's better to use that phrase after the verb (but I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is absolutely impossible to use it the way A does). For example:

Athletes, some of them at a very high level, compete... ← This is not very clear. Are we trying to say that some athletes are at a very high level or are we trying to say that some athletes compete at a very high level?

Yes, the use of being is incorrect here.

Simplify the sentence:
Stars are in motion, yet are so far away that the change in their position is not noticeable.

The use of 'so...that' shows the reason their position change is not noticeable. Hence, the use of 'being' is incorrect. I wouldn't be ok with using it even in the sense of 'because'.

"some of them at tremendous speeds" needs to modify the motion of the stars. If it modifies 'stars', we don't know what is happening at tremendous speeds. Are the stars moving at tremendous speeds? Are they growing at tremendous speeds? Are they burning out at tremendous speeds? The use of "motion" clarifies that we are talking about the speeds at which they are moving.

In option B, "them" can point to both the stars and the planets. Again "they" can refer to both. How to counter this issue?

Hello AcesA,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, since "some of them at tremendous speeds" is an adverbial phrase that modifies the clause "the stars are in motion", we can tell that "them" refers to "stars", and since a pronoun and its derivatives can only refer to a single referent in one sentence, we can reasonably conclude that "they" also refers to stars.

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

When comparing answer choices B and D. Isn't the comparison between the motion of the planets and the stars?

I am having a hard time deciding on whether to use like or as in this case. I understand like is used to compare nouns such as planets vs stars but in this case aren't we comparing the action (or the motion) of the two?

"the stars are in motion" - I thought this is a clause and therefore we would need "as"

Any help on clarifying this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Take another look.

Does the sentence (B) version say "like the motion of the planets" or "like the planets are moving"?

What is compared in the (B) version of the sentence?

capsguy2018

When we start with a comparison phrase, there will always be a clause afterward, because otherwise we wouldn't have a sentence! But that doesn't mean we are comparing the noun in the comparison phrase to the whole sentence. I can say "Like my parents, I read every day" or "As my parents do, I read every day." The idea conveyed is essentially the same in both, but on a technical level, the first is comparing me to my parents. We are alike. How? We read every day. The second is comparing actions. What is it that I do that my parents also do? Read every day.

Notice that answer choice D doesn't work in either of these two ways, because the initial modifier doesn't describe an action. It just says "As the planets." So D is just an incorrectly-phrased noun comparison. The only way that it would work would be if the stars WERE the planets, since AS before a noun can mean "in the role of." This is the usage we see in "As your attorney, I advise you not to answer that."