According to a recent study of consumer spending on prescription

Hi egmat VeritasKarishma chetan2u GMATNinja

Could you please explain why the part of choice B after semi-colon is not a independent clause?

the remainder of the increase coming from sales of the 9,850 prescription medicines that companies did not advertise or advertised very little.

It contains subject verb pair as in boldface

Thanks in advance

'coming' is not acting as a verb here. When the present participle form (-ing form) acts as a verb, it needs a helping verb with it such as is/was/are etc
The increase is coming from ... (verb)
The increase coming from ... (not a verb)

Take another example:
The boy is sitting in the front yard. (verb)
The boy sitting in the front yard is my brother. (The verb here is 'is'. 'sitting in the front yard' is a modifier modifying the boy)

According to a recent study of consumer spending on prescription medications, increases in the sales of the 50 drugs that were advertised most heavily accounts for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, the remainder of which came from sales of the 9,850 prescription medicines that companies did not advertise or advertised very little.


(A) heavily accounts for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, the remainder of which came Singular verb "accounts" refers to plural "sales increases". Present tense "accounts" is used to refer to the past ("last year"). Eliminate.

(B) heavily were what accounted for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year; the remainder of the increase coming The portion after the semi colon is not an independent clause due to the verb "coming". Also, "were what" is not required. Eliminate.

(C) heavily accounted for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, the remainder of the increase coming Correct answer. Verb errors in (A) are rectified and no new errors are introduced.

(D) heavily, accounting for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, while the remainder of the increase came Sentence fragment due to lack of main verb. Eliminate.

(E) heavily, which accounted for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, with the remainder of it coming Same error as (D). Eliminate.

Hope this helps.

Hello GDG,
This is in response to the PM you sent.

In GMAT SC, a semicolon is used to join two independent clauses. But what follows the semicolon in Choice B is not even a clause. A clause must contain a subject and its corresponding verb. But in Choice B, there is no verb for the subject the remainder of the increase. Please note that the word coming is NOT a verb because it is not preceded by any helping verb such as is, were, etc. Therefore, Choice B has this structural error.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

woohoo921

"the remainder ... coming from ..."
is an absolute phrase.

Check this post to learn how it is used:
https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html#/2014/0 ... -the-gmat/

Let me know if it makes sense now.

EducationAisle
Hello, it seems that 'advertised' is the verb of 'drugs' (e.g., drugs were kept). I think both 'advertised' and 'kept' play same role. Could you explain why 'advertised' is not considered as verb for 'drugs'?
Thanks__

AjiteshArun
Hello,
Thanks for this explanation.
Can we consider the highlighted part as complete clause? I'm a little worried about the use of WHAT here in this case! Is the WHAT part the object of verb (were)?
Appreciating your help..

Hi TheUltimateWinner,

Yes, the highlighted part is a complete clause. As for your second question, we can look at this as a SVC (subject-verb-complement) pattern.

Before we break this structure down, I'd like you to look at what we are doing as a way to "repackage" the sentence into two related structures around a be verb.

1. We want peace. ← This is a simple sentence. It has no be verb or wh-clause.

2. What we want is peace. ← We've "repackaged" (1) into two structures (a wh-clause and a noun in this case) around a be verb (is). The is specifies what we want.

This wh-clause is a type of relative clause, but we can think of it as a noun clause. The main point is that it acts as a noun.

3. Peace is what we want. ← We can "invert" (2) like this.

This is what we see in option B:

4. Increases in the sales of the 50 drugs that were advertised most heavily were what accounted for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year.

This is that "inverted" form we were looking at. If we decide not to do all this "repackaging", we get:

5. Increases in the sales of the 50 drugs that were advertised most heavily accounted for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year. ← This is what option C leads to.

We can see that (5) doesn't push a wh-clause on us or repackage the sentence around a be verb. It is slightly simpler, but to answer your main question, both (4) and (5) have complete subject-verb pairs.

Hi! kept is also a past participle in the sentence drugs were kept.

In fact, any non -ing verb form after is/are/was/were will be past participle.

He is done with classes.

Players were kept in the dark.

Yes, it is past participle. But shouldn’t we consider the whole (were advertised) as verb?
S/he is doing the job.
Shouldn’t we consider “is doing” (not only ‘is’) as a verb?
Thanks__

Posted from my mobile device

I suppose it would do no harm if you consider is doing as a verb, as long as you realize that doing alone is not a verb.

According to a recent study of consumer spending on prescription medications, increases in the sales of the 50 drugs that were advertised most heavily accounts for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, the remainder of which came from sales of the 9,850 prescription medicines that companies did not advertise or advertised very little.


(A) heavily accounts for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, the remainder of which came
According to a recent study, increases in the sales of the 50 drugs- Subject
The singular verb “accounts” does not agree with the plural subject “increases”
The pronoun “which” does not have a clear antecedent. Eliminate A.

(B) heavily were what accounted for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year; the remainder of the increase coming
“Were what accounted” is wordy and awkward.
The remainder of the increase coming- “coming” is a participle/modifier and not a verb. After a semicolon, we need to have an independent clause. Without a verb, the part after the semicolon becomes a sentence fragment and is incorrect. Eliminate

(C) heavily accounted for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, the remainder of the increase coming
Option C corrects the errors in options A and B.
"The remainder of the increase"- noun
"Coming from sales of" - Modifier
This construction- Noun + noun modifier- is called absolute modifiers. It modifies the entire preceding clause. Correct

(D) heavily, accounting for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, while the remainder of the increase came
"Accounting" is a modifier and not a verb. There is no corresponding verb for “increases in the sales”. Eliminate

(E) heavily, which accounted for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in drug spending last year, with the remainder of it coming

“Which” introduces a dependent clause. There is no corresponding verb for “increases in the sales”. Eliminate

the following sentence is also correct:
the increase in sale of the drugs which are advertised heavily account for half of 20 bilion of total increase and the remainder of the increase come from the drugs which are advertise a little.
and our official answer is also correct

the point is we can change the second independent clause into an independent . there are two sentences which express the same meaning.

I write this because I and many persons think that the second dependent clause should be an independent clause.

Hi GMATNinja and egmat.

Thanks for the contribution towards this question.

I have a doubt related to the kind of modifier used in the correct option C. The entity after the " comma" is a noun modifier. Can it be considered as a noun + noun modifier as well? I am a little confused because the part after comma is a long sentence with a noun phrase followed by "that" clause.

I am not sure if it could be both noun modifier = noun + noun modifier

Actually it doesn't matter which modifier bucket you put that entity. This is just for my understanding. Thanks.

First, the part after the comma is not a complete sentence:

"the remainder of the increase coming from sales of the 9,850 prescription medicines that companies did not advertise or advertised very little."

The bolded portions are modifiers, and if we strip those out we're left with just:

"the remainder coming from sales"

"Coming" is just an -ing modifer, not a verb, so we don't have a complete sentence (as described in this article, an “-ing” word can only be a verb if it is immediately preceded by some form of “to be”). So yes, the basic structure of the part after the comma is a noun ("the remainder") + noun modifier ("coming from sales").

For more on this, check out this post if you haven't already.

I hope that helps!

You can read more about such modifiers in this old post by Mike McGarry on magoosh.com
https://magoosh.com/gmat/absolute-phrases-on-the-gmat/

Posted from my mobile device

Hello rinkuda,

We hope this finds you well.

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

Firstly, "the remainder of the increase coming from sales of the 9,850 prescription medicines that companies did not advertise or advertised very little" is not a sentence; as "coming" is a present participle ("verb+ing") acting as a noun modifier, there is no active verb to act upon "the remainder".

Secondly, we cannot say that Option C features a "noun + noun modifier" construction, here, as "the remainder...coming from sales..." is actually acting upon the entirety of the preceding clause.

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