Hello thingocanhnguyen,


I would be glad to help you with this one.

Please pay attention the meaning of the sentence.

Per he context of the sentence, we may think that the milky sap gives mouth sores to cattle. However, there is no confusion in understanding that leafy spurge displaces grasses and other cattle food.

Now look at the structure of Choice B. The verb gives and displaces are parallel and must belong to the same subject. The subject for these two verbs is that.

So logically, that must refer to leafy spurge because both the verbs make sense with this subject. It is absolutely logical to say that leafy spurge gives mouth sores to cattle, may be because of the milky sap it has.

In addition, whenever that is used to modify the immediate preceding noun entity, it is NEVER separated with that entity with a comma.


But in this choice, there is a comma between milky sap and that. Basically, both the modifiers - a herbaceous plant from Eurasia and with milky sap - are enclosed between commas because they just provide some additional information about the leafy spurge that are not crucial to core meaning of the sentence.

Hence, the noun modifier that jumps over the preceding modifiers and modify leafy spurge.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
_________________

| '4 out of Top 5' Instructors on gmatclub | 70 point improvement guarantee | www.e-gmat.com

About 5 million acres in the United States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displacing grasses and other cattle food and rendering rangeland worthless.

A) States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displacing grasses and other cattle food and rendering
B) States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia, with milky sap, that gives mouth sores to cattle and displaces grasses and other cattle food, rendering
C) States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia having milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle and displacing grasses and other cattle food, rendering
D) States, having been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displaces grasses and other cattle food, and renders
E) States, having been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia that has milky sap giving mouth sores to cattle and displacing grasses and other cattle food, rendering


This is perhaps the worst official GMAT SC question I have ever seen: the OA of B is still the best choice due to verb parallelism / meaning issues, but it is wordy and horribly punctuated.

Sometimes on the GMAT, the "best" choice is pretty darn far from the perfect version.

My perfect version: About 5 million acres in the United States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap, which gives mouth sores to cattle, displaces grasses and other cattle food, and renders rangeland worthless.

Also, in the 2018 OG the phrase "a herbaceous plant from Eurasia" is in italics in Choice B for some reason.

-Brian
_________________

Harvard grad and 99% GMAT scorer, offering expert, private GMAT tutoring and coaching, both in-person (San Diego, CA, USA) and online worldwide, since 2002.

One of the only known humans to have taken the GMAT 5 times and scored in the 700s every time (700, 710, 730, 750, 770), including verified section scores of Q50 / V47, as well as personal bests of 8/8 IR (2 times), 6/6 AWA (4 times), 50/51Q and 48/51V (1 question wrong).

You can download my official test-taker score report (all scores within the last 5 years) directly from the Pearson Vue website: https://tinyurl.com/y94hlarr Date of Birth: 09 December 1979.

GMAT Action Plan and Free E-Book - McElroy Tutoring

Contact: mcelroy@post.harvard.edu

Hi Skywalker18!



The sentence is saying: leafy spurge = herbaceous plant with milky sap. So "milky sap" is technically modifying "plant", which in turn is part of a noun phrase modifying "leafy spurge".


Yes, the parallelism here works We can interpret "gives...", "displaces...", and "renders..." as all modifying "leafy spurge", and so the parallelism here is consistent and makes sense.



Here, "rendering" is modifying the whole phrase: "gives mouth sores to cattle and displaces grasses and other cattle food".

I hope that helps!
-Carolyn
_________________

Magoosh Test Prep

Let me simply say this: it's questions like these that make me feel better about having scored "only" 48/51 in Verbal (1 wrong) instead of a perfect 51.

Not every GMAC official question is fully fair or perfectly written, especially on Verbal, and this "leafy spurge" question is a great example of that. Luckily, you can get around 5 wrong on Verbal and still earn a 96% score of V42 (around 3 or fewer wrong for 99% or above: V45+).

-Brian
_________________

Harvard grad and 99% GMAT scorer, offering expert, private GMAT tutoring and coaching, both in-person (San Diego, CA, USA) and online worldwide, since 2002.

One of the only known humans to have taken the GMAT 5 times and scored in the 700s every time (700, 710, 730, 750, 770), including verified section scores of Q50 / V47, as well as personal bests of 8/8 IR (2 times), 6/6 AWA (4 times), 50/51Q and 48/51V (1 question wrong).

You can download my official test-taker score report (all scores within the last 5 years) directly from the Pearson Vue website: https://tinyurl.com/y94hlarr Date of Birth: 09 December 1979.

GMAT Action Plan and Free E-Book - McElroy Tutoring

Contact: mcelroy@post.harvard.edu

Hello Everyone!

Here is another great sample GMAT question! Let's take a closer look at each option and see where we can narrow things down to find the right answer! First, here is the original sentence, with any major differences highlighted in orange:

About 5 million acres in the United States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displacing grasses and other cattle food and rendering rangeland worthless.

(A) States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displacing grasses and other cattle food and rendering
(B) States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia, with milky sap, that gives mouth sores to cattle and displaces grasses and other cattle food, rendering
(C) States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia having milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle and displacing grasses and other cattle food, rendering
(D) States, having been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displaces grasses and other cattle food, and renders
(E) States, having been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia that has milky sap giving mouth sores to cattle and displacing grasses and other cattle food, rendering

There are a couple major differences we can see after a quick glance over the options:

1. have been invaded vs. having been invaded
2. parallel structure

Let's start with #1 on our list because it will eliminate either 2 or 3 options right off the bat: have been invaded vs. having been invaded.

If we read through each option and look for the complete sentence within it, we find a problem:

(A) About 5 million acres in the United States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displacing grasses and other cattle food and rendering rangeland worthless.
(B) About 5 million acres in the United States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia, with milky sap, that gives mouth sores to cattle and displaces grasses and other cattle food, rendering rangeland worthless.
(C) About 5 million acres in the United States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia having milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle and displacing grasses and other cattle food, rendering rangeland worthless.

Options A, B, & C are OK so far because there is a complete sentence somewhere in there, with just a few added phrases after it to add detail.

(D) About 5 million acres in the United States, having been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displaces grasses and other cattle food, and renders rangeland worthless.

This option is INCORRECT because, while you could argue there is a complete sentence here, it is vastly different than the intended meaning! The leafy spurge does all of these things, not the land itself!

(E) About 5 million acres in the United States, having been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia that has milky sap giving mouth sores to cattle and displacing grasses and other cattle food, rendering rangeland worthless.

This option is INCORRECT because there is no other phrase here that has a verb to complete the rest of the sentence! Therefore, this is one very long sentence fragment!

We can eliminate answers D & E because using the phrase "having been invaded" creates either a sentence fragment or distorts the original meaning.

Now that we're left with options A, B, & C, let's tackle #3 on our list: parallel structure.

We know that leafy spurge does 3 things:
1. gives cattle mouth sores
2. displaces grass and other cattle food
3. renders rangeland worthless

In some options, all 3 items are listed as happening at the same time (A, B, and C). For those, all 3 items must use parallel structure.
In other options, only 2 items are listed, and #3 on the list happens as a result of #1 and #2 (A and B, causing C). In that case, only #1 and #2 on the list must be parallel.

Let's see how each option stacks up in terms of parallel structure:

(A) States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia with milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle, displacing grasses and other cattle food and rendering

This option is INCORRECT because the listed items don't use parallel structure. In this case, the sentence lists all 3 items as happening at the same time, so all 3 must be parallel!

(B) States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia, with milky sap, that gives mouth sores to cattle and displaces grasses and other cattle food, rendering

This option is CORRECT! The two items (gives mouth sores / displaces grasses) use parallel format. The word "rendering" doesn't need to be parallel to the other two here because it is being used to indicate that #1 and #2 on the list lead to #3 happening, so it's okay to keep it the way it is.

(C) States have been invaded by leafy spurge, a herbaceous plant from Eurasia having milky sap that gives mouth sores to cattle and displacing grasses and other cattle food, rendering

This option is INCORRECT because the two items (gives / displacing) need to be in parallel format!

There you go! Option B is the correct answer because it uses parallel structure where needed, and includes a verb to make it a complete thought!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.
_________________

"Students study. GMAT assassins train."




★★★★★ GMAT Club Verified Reviews for EMPOWERgmat & Special Discount


GMAT Club Verbal Advantage EMPOWERgmat Critical Reasoning Question Pack

Sentence Analysis
Here’s the sentence structure:

About 5 million acres (Main subject: ‘acres’)
in the United States (Prepositional phrase modifying the main subject)
have been invaded by leafy spurge, (Main Verb: have been invaded)
a herbaceous plant (A noun – technically, an appositive – modifying ‘leafy spurge’)
from Eurasia (Prepositional phrase modifying ‘plant’)
with milky sap (Prepositional phrase modifying ‘plant’)
that gives mouth sores to cattle, (relative clause modifying ‘plant’. Subject: that; Verb: gives)
displacing grasses and other cattle food (First Verb-ing modifier modifying the previous clause)
and rendering rangeland worthless. (Second Verb-ing modifier modifying the previous clause)
The main part of the sentence is that some land (about 5 million acres) in the US have been invaded by a plant (leafy spurge). The plant is from Eurasia and has milky sap. The plant gives mouth sores to cattle, displaces grasses and other cattle foods and (common sensibly) by doing so, renders rangeland worthless.

There are a couple of problems in the original sentence:

‘displacing grasses and other cattle food’ is presented as a verb-ing modifier modifying the preceding clause ‘that gives mouth sores to cattle’. However, the verb-ing modifier does not provide additional information about the clause. ‘Giving mouth sores to cattle’ is unrelated to (and independent of) ‘displacing grasses and other cattle food’.
The reference of ‘that’ is not very clear. While the clause ‘that gives mouth sores to cattle’ may make sense even if ‘that’ refers to milky sap, the verb-ing ‘displacing grasses…’ will not make sense in such a case since milky sap cannot displace grasses. Ideally, ‘that’ should clearly refer to ‘herbaceous plant’.
_________________

If you like this post, be kind and help me with Kudos!

Cheers!