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605-655 Level|   Comparisons|   Meaning/Logical Predication|   Verb Tense/Form|                        
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 27 Sep 2022, 08:48
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tramobile
didn't you missed but after comma while analysing option D? which makes it proper independent sentence GMATNinja
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Indeed, we missed the "but" right before the underlined portion! :facepalm_man:

That's embarrassing. I fixed the original explanation so that it's hopefully, um, correct now. :-|

Thank you so much for pointing out my screwup!
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 07 Oct 2022, 06:38
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,FANBOYS are always followed by IC. So here IMO after ',but' we need an IC. But in option B it is not the case. Can someone please shed some light on this.

Thankyou
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 08 Oct 2022, 11:52
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bitorbyte
hi everyone,

What does it mean to say "According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct rendering of speech, but more than likely began as.."

I am specifically confused on the meaning of 'more than likely'? What is the function of the word than here?
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Happy to response.
Here, "more than" is used to say that the origin of "the earliest writing" came from "separate and distinct symbolic system of communication" rather than from "direct rendering of speech", and as scholars are not sure about this claim so they use "likely", which is like "probably" of first clause: the earliest writing was probably not a direct rendering of speech
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 08 Oct 2022, 22:06
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BansalT
FANBOYS are always followed by IC.
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I'm not sure where you got this idea, but it's not right.
The "A" and "O" here are and and or, which can connect parallel elements ranging from single words all the way to whole compound/complex clauses.
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 09 Oct 2022, 08:27
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BansalT
,FANBOYS are always followed by IC. So here IMO after ',but' we need an IC. But in option B it is not the case. Can someone please shed some light on this.

Thankyou
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We attempted to address this question earlier in the thread: https://gmatclub.com/forum/according-to ... l#p2127263. Let us know if that doesn't help!
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 16 Nov 2022, 06:42
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GMATNinja
Let's start by putting (A) and (B) side-by-side:

Quote:
(A) was more likely to begin as
(B) more than likely began as
The verb tense in (A) is really confusing, and it's definitely not our best option. We have three different verbs in the sentence, all of which describe "the earliest writing", which:

  • ..."was probably not a direct rendering of speech"
  • "...was more likely to begin..."
  • and "...later merged with spoken language."

That middle piece is wacky. All three of these things happened in the past, and need to be in the same version of past tense. So the underlined portion is odd: why would we say "was more likely to begin", when we could just say "more likely began as"? "Begin" is in present tense (i.e., a general characteristic), and "was more likely to begin" doesn't make much sense -- it's almost as if the earliest writing had some probabilistic quality or something, and there was a good chance that it would eventually begin "as a separate and distinct symbolic system."

That's so much messier than (B), which just says that according to scholars, it's likely that the earliest writing actually began "as a separate and distinct symbolic system."

So we can get rid of (A), and keep (B).

Quote:
(C) more than likely beginning from
There are two little problems with (C), particularly when we compare it with (B).

First, I don't know why we would switch the verb "began" to the participle "beginning", considering that the rest of the sentence features nice, simple, past tense verbs ("the earliest writing was... and later merged..." So in this sense, (B) is clearly better than (C).

The other issue is that it doesn't really make sense to say that the earliest writing was beginning "from a separate and distinct symbolic system." The earliest writing didn't evolve from some other separate and distinct system; the earliest writing WAS the separate and distinct symbolic system.

So we can ditch (C).

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GMATNinja
Thanks for the explanation.
It seems that the sentence is like follows:
---the earliest writing was blah blah, but the earliest writing began as blah blah, and the earliest writing merged with spoken language.
^^ It seems that the sentence is the list of 3 verb phrases. The 'but' normally opposes something that is written before it (...the earliest writing was probably not a direct rendering of speech). As 'and' is the connector here shouldn't it be best format like below?
According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct rendering of speech, but it more than likely began as a separate and distinct symbolic system of communication, and only later (it) merged with spoken language.

note: add 'it' and removed COMMA
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 22 Mar 2023, 14:07
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I had a doubt regarding the parallel construction used for was, began and merged. Why are we not considering rendering as a part of not X but Y construct? In that case, C could be a probable option right?
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 23 Mar 2023, 00:46
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ayushvij5
I had a doubt regarding the parallel construction used for was, began and merged. Why are we not considering rendering as a part of not X but Y construct? In that case, C could be a probable option right?
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What would rendering be parallel (grammatically similar) to Ayush?
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 23 Mar 2023, 10:57
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Can't rendering be parallel with beginning that is present in the option (C)?
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 26 Aug 2023, 06:57
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This question is testing tenses agreement, all choices suck but the most acceptable one is B because it puts the vern in the right tense.
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According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct 02 Nov 2023, 11:58
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Quote:
According to scholars, the earliest writing was probably not a direct rendering of speech, but was more likely to begin as a separate and distinct symbolic system of communication, and only later merged with spoken language.

(A) was more likely to begin as
(B) more than likely began as
(C) more than likely beginning from
(D) it was more than likely begun from
(E) it was more likely that it began
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Hello Experts,
Does both ''it'' refer back to same noun ''earliest writing''?
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