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After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair

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manik919
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After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   Updated on: 04 Jun 2018, 23:20
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After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish; the Bild, the largest daily, described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever.


A) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish;
B) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish;
C) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that had taken almost a decade to finish and
D) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and
E) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and that

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E

Originally posted by manik919 on 04 Jun 2018, 22:54.
Last edited by Bunuel on 04 Jun 2018, 23:20, edited 1 time in total.
Renamed the topic and edited the question.
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   09 Jun 2018, 20:57
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aksh5900 wrote:
Is " started repairing the historical....." wrong? And can you please justify the use of 'and that' at the last. I thought these are two independent sentences so went for option B (with the semicolon)


Let's start with the semicolon. As you know, the semicolon should be used to separate two independent clauses -- basically, two sentences that can stand alone.

In answer choices A and B, the phrase after the semicolon is: “the Bild, the largest daily, described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever.” Read on its own, it sounds as though “the Bild” is described as an expensive repair. How could a daily paper be a repair? This is nonsense. And it's also not a standalone sentence. So for that reason, (A) and (B) are out.

The next thing I notice is the use of the parallel marker “and.” Now we’ve got two options. In (C) and (D), “and” seems to connect one noun phrase, “the Bild” to a previous noun phrase, “the historical cathedral.” So the city of Cologne repaired a cathedral and a newspaper? That’s weird.

In (E), “and” seems to connect two clauses, each beginning with “that.” Each of the clauses appears to be describing the project. So we’re talking about a project that took almost a decade and that the Bild described as the most expensive repair ever undertaken. Makes sense to me. So (E) is our answer.

I hope this helps!
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   08 Jun 2018, 00:20
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manik919 wrote:
After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish; the Bild, the largest daily, described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever.


A) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish;
B) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish;
C) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that had taken almost a decade to finish and
D) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and
E) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and that


Imo E

This is a very good question to check verb-ing and verb-ed parallelism issue .
Meaning : After the second world war , the city of Cologne started the repair of the historical Cathedral .The repair of the historical Cathedral took almost a decade .The repair was described by Bild as most expensive ever.

This question uses very sophisticated modifier known as Absolute modifiers .
The structure of absolute modifier is Noun + Noun modifier .

Here noun is " A project " and what ever comes after noun is noun modifier per correct choice "that took almost a decade to finish and that the Bild, the largest daily, described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever."
We use absolute phrase to modify whole preceding clause in some way ; they are aslo used to modify the subject or the noun of the main clause .
Now we must have proper between the two noun modifiers that we have in absolute phrase .
Only E does that .
Now let us analyse other options as well.

A per this choice the Bild described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever . Here we do not have an object that the Bild describes. Ideally the sentence should have object for the verb described .We can correct this sentence by making the clause a noun modifier (using a relative pronoun)

B Now the structure of the sentence is changes but the issue still remains . We have to object of the verb describes .

C Choice is a disaster. we have a past perfect tense which we do not need and still there the object of verb describes is missing .The meaning is not clear .

D Same error as C . To make meaning more clear we have to use that to remove ambiguity .

E correct
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   09 Jun 2018, 21:45
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GMATNinja wrote:
aksh5900 wrote:
Is " started repairing the historical....." wrong? And can you please justify the use of 'and that' at the last. I thought these are two independent sentences so went for option B (with the semicolon)


Let's start with the semicolon. As you know, the semicolon should be used to separate two independent clauses -- basically, two sentences that can stand alone.

In answer choices A and B, the phrase after the semicolon is: “the Bild, the largest daily, described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever.” Read on its own, it sounds as though “the Bild” is described as an expensive repair. How could a daily paper be a repair? This is nonsense. And it's also not a standalone sentence. So for that reason, (A) and (B) are out.

The next thing I notice is the use of the parallel marker “and.” Now we’ve got two options. In C and E, “and” seems to connect one noun phrase, “the Bild” to a previous noun phrase, “the historical cathedral.” So the city of Cologne repaired a cathedral and a newspaper? That’s weird.

In D, “and” seems to connect two clauses, each beginning with “that.” Each of the clauses appears to be describing the project. So we’re talking about a project that took almost a decade and that the Bild described as the most expensive repair ever undertaken. Makes sense to me. So D is our answer.


I hope this helps!



Thank You so much GMATNinja
BTW you interchanged option D and E.
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   05 Jun 2018, 23:01
Could someone pls explain the IMO.
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   05 Jun 2018, 23:19
sghoshgt,

Firstly eliminate A and B as the part after ; is not a clause.

Secondly, choice C uses 'had taken' unnecessary.

Next, between D and E, only E refers to the 'repair' by using 'that' at the end. This 'that' refers back to the repair as intended.

Hope this helps.
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   06 Jun 2018, 05:11
manik919 wrote:
After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish; the Bild, the largest daily, described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever.


A) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish;
B) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish;
C) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that had taken almost a decade to finish and
D) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and
E) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and that



Can someone help me to eliminate option D?
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   06 Jun 2018, 10:05
jackspire wrote:
manik919 wrote:
After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish; the Bild, the largest daily, described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever.


A) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish;
B) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish;
C) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that had taken almost a decade to finish and
D) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and
E) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and that



Can someone help me to eliminate option D?


D implies that the city of Cologne undertook two projects - the Cathedral and the Bild, which makes it wrong.
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   06 Jun 2018, 20:13
Is " started repairing the historical....." wrong? And can you please justify the use of 'and that' at the last. I thought these are two independent sentences so went for option B (with the semicolon)
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   07 Jun 2018, 09:48
Hi souvik101990,

Can you help me understand the structure of this sentence? is "described" acting as a verb or a modifier?
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   07 Jun 2018, 21:27
Answer is E
A project modifies cathedral
That has taken almost a decade to finish modifies the project(modifier 1)
That the bild.... ( modifier 2)
The 'and' correctly connects two parallel modifiers.


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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   08 Jun 2018, 00:26
jackspire wrote:
manik919 wrote:
After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish; the Bild, the largest daily, described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever.


A) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project, taking almost a decade to finish;
B) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish;
C) repairing the historical Cathedral, a project that had taken almost a decade to finish and
D) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and
E) the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and that



Can someone help me to eliminate option D?

Hi happy to hep

This question uses and which is open parallelism marker , meaning that it is not not easy to identify where the parallelism starts .
In choice we have the same error
Here we have two entities in parallel
the repair of the historical Cathedral, a project that took almost a decade to finish and the Bild, the largest daily, described as the most expensive repair undertaken ever.
I you read D carefully we are not sure what the Bild describes as most expensive ever only after repeating " that " we come to know about what the Bild describes.
Hope its clear .
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   09 Jun 2018, 21:57
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aksh5900 wrote:


Thank You so much GMATNinja
BTW you interchanged option D and E.

Oops, thank you for pointing out my mistake, aksh5900! I edited my post above so that it doesn't confuse anybody else who stumbles onto this thread. Much appreciated! :)
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink] New post   11 Jun 2023, 01:02
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Re: After the Second World War, the city of Cologne started the repair [#permalink]
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