An effort to control the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s inte

Answer IMO E
-> "to control" is correct, as infinitive of purpose. -> B,C, D out
-> "began" is the correct simple past form of "begin", but in A "begun" is wrong.
Answer E

notes: proper idiom is "effort to".

(A)

An effort to control the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s interior cities, begun almost thirty years ago, has been partially successful, despite the setback of a major drought and the interruption of aid during an extended economic crisis.


(A) to control the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s interior cities, begun almost thirty years ago, Correct

(B) begun almost thirty years ago for controlling the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s interior cities, Incorrect

(C) begun for controlling the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s interior cities almost thirty years ago, Incorrect

(D) at controlling the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s interior cities begun almost thirty years ago, Incorrect

(E) that has begun almost thirty years ago to control the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s interior cities, Incorrect


Eliminate B, C, D & E - all are run-on sentence, 'has been ' has no precedent

So Answer - A

IMO A - simply because Effort to Control is the right construct.

(B) An effort Begun is wrong construct
(C) An effort Begun is wrong construct
(D) Seems to be a run on sentence
(E) tense is erroneous.

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

A

This is an idiom question. Do you attempt to do something, do you attempt at something, or do you attempt for something? Choice E uses the idiom correctly but creates a new tense error. The best answer is A.

zhanbo - I have a few lame questions, request you to please elaborate these for me once. I understand that the idiomatic usage of "an effort to" is being tested here primarily (as explained in OA). I have questions on other aspects as I seem to be missing some fundamental rules here.

1. "began" Vs "begun": As per my knowledge, "began" is simple past and "begun' is past-participle. (This article also explains the same.)
Example: World War began in 1914 (simple past); The application process has already begun (past participle)
In option A: "An effort to control the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s interior cities, begun..." => Should the correct usage of "begin" here not be "began" instead of "begun"? Since there is a missing "has/have" for "begun".

2. Option B: "begun almost thirty years ago for controlling the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s interior cities."
You have mentioned that "comma" before the word "has been" separates the Subject and verb. But the same happens in Option A as well: "An effort to control the crippling effects of poverty in Brazil’s interior cities, begun almost thirty years ago, has been partially successful, despite the setback of a major drought and the interruption of aid during an extended economic crisis." Here, "An effort" is Subject and "has been" is verb, which are separated by comma. Then how is A correct?

Could you please help me understand what I am missing here?

Begun is indeed the past-participle for verb "begin". In (A), "begun almost thirty years ago" is a past-participle phrase that modifies "an effort".

To better understand its construction, let's start with two ways to connect "effort" and "begin".
(1) The effort began 30 years ago.
(2) Someone (maybe a government agency) began the effort 30 years ago.

Both sentences above are okay. Now, for sentence (2), we can rewrite it in a passive voice (because we do not know or do not want to mention who began the effort) as
(3) The effort was begun 30 years ago (by someone).
Now, "The effort was begun 30 years ago." is a sentence, but we can change it to be a fragment using past-participle phrase,
(4) The effort begun 30 years ago <-- Not a sentence
The fragment can now take a verb to construct a complete sentence:
(5) The effort begun 30 years ago has been partially successful. <-- Now a sentence with a past-participle phrase

That is basically how option (A) uses "begun almost 30 years ago", but (A) also sets off the past-participle phrase by two commas. Author typically decides to set off non-essential information with commas or em-dash.

In (B), however, there is no comma before "begun", so adding a comma after "cities" is incorrect: comma should not be used between subject and verb.
Correct: Tom is going to marry Ellen next week.
Wrong: Tom, is going to marry Ellen next week.
Correct: Tom, my younger brother, is going to marry Ellen next week.
Correct: Tom, rumored to run for the president some day, is going to marry Ellen next week.
"rumored to run for the president some day" is a past-participle phrase.

Hope it helps!

Wow! Thank you so much zhanbo
I couldn't have got a better explanation- very neat and clear with examples. Really really appreciate it. I wish I could give you 10 kudos for this answer.

Hi zhanbo - a quick question on the subject and verb separated by comma:

Is the following sentence that is split by comma correct?

1. The stock that fell the most last year, is the best stock.
Here the subject "stock" and "is the best stock" are separated by comma.

In your example, the use of the comma is inappropriate. Read more at https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-wi ... and-verbs/.

There are cases when commas are used between a subject and its main verb because a phrase or clause is set aside by a pair of commas.

The stock, whose price was merely a dollar at the beginning of the year, is the best-performing one this month.
The company's stock, as well as its reputation, took a hit this month.
The company's stock, the best performing one last year, is at risk of delisting.

Can easily cancel D and E. For B and C to be considered, the commo must not the there, Only left with A

in option A: how can we decide that 'begun almost thirty years ago' is modifying 'effort' and not 'cities'
as the modifier is close to 'cities' by actually modifying 'effort'

in option E - Only comma is the issue or anything else we can check.
An effort that - is good start of a sentence.

zhanbo KarishmaB - experts, can you please help?
what is "begun almost thirty years ago" modifying? Logically it should modify "effort". But wouldn't we use the touch rule, therefore, end up modifying "Brazil’s interior cities".

what is "begun almost thirty years ago" modifying? Logically it should modify "effort". But wouldn't we use the touch rule, therefore, end up modifying "Brazil???s interior cities".

Is this some kind of rule in which such phrases(begun 30 years ago) will refer to the subject of the previous clause? or is this more logic driven?

If rest of the options were idiomatically correct then it could have been extremely difficult to select this option. This is a really confusing part that has been bugging me for quite some time. I would sincerely request a detailed answer, please. It will be a huge help. Thank you

Yes, it is modifying "effort," but with the way the sentence is constructed, there is one long now from "effort" to "cities," so the noun being modified is still "effort." If there is a long compound noun, as in this case, the first noun in the noun phrase is still the one being modified, and is also the noun that properly agrees with the verb.

Make it a bit simpler:

An effort to control poverty, begun 30 years ago, has been ...

What started 30 years ago? An effort? This doesn't tell us exactly what started. An effort for what? We need to say 'an effort to control poverty' was the one that started 30 years ago. 'begun 30 years ago' is modifying the entire noun phrase 'an effort to control poverty'

Take another example:

A book on changing world dynamics, written 10 years ago, is currently on the top ten list ...

What are we talking about? Not just any book. 'on changing world dynamics' restricts the book to that one book so it is essential. 'written 10 years ago' modifies this entire noun phrase 'a book on changing world dynamics'

Similarly, in the original sentence, the modifier is modifying the entire noun phrase. The noun phrase tells us exactly what began 30 years ago.