Anthropological research teams visited several Afghan cities, filming

Question

Anthropological research teams visited several Afghan  cities, filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that are turning up and interviewing  locals to better understand the aftermath of the decade-long conflict.

(A) cities, filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that are turning up and interviewing

(B) cities, filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that turned up, and interviewing

(C) cities, filmed neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that turned up, and interviewed

(D) cities and filmed neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that are turning up, and interviewed

(E) cities, filmed neighborhoods, digitized old photographs, turned up and interviewed

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/11/arts/design/centuries-of-judaica-from-muslim-lands-in-middle-east.html

“Everywhere in Morocco is Jewish memory,” Elmehdi Boudra, Mimouna’s president, said in an interview. A few thousand Jews remain in Morocco, mostly in urban areas. Diarna has documented the country’s lavish and rustic synagogues and cemeteries with raised stone tombs, as well as ruined Nazi camps at the Algerian border.

Diarna teams have visited a dozen other countries,  filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photos that turn up and interviewing  inhabitants. The researchers studied some buildings just before they were demolished or suffered war damage, including a Jewish hospital in Tangiers and a synagogue in Damascus.

B. Understanding the meaning of this sentence, along with understanding participial modifiers, is the key to this question. This sentence attempts to say that researchers visited these places, and that among the activities they performed when doing so they filmed, digitized, and interviewed.

Choice A is close, but the modifier "that are turning up" next to "photographs" sets the actions in the present tense, when we know from the verb "visited" that this all happened previously.

Choice B corrects that error, and is therefore correct.

Choices C and D illogically use the participial modifier "digitizing old photographs" to modify a logically-separate action "filmed neighborhoods".

D also creates an improper list, linking the verbs "visited and filmed...and interviewed".

And choice E illogically adds "turned up" as a verb in the list of past-tense events.

What may seem upon a visual scan to be a valid list ("visited, filmed, digitized, turned, and interviewed") has a bizarre meaning; what does "turned up" mean in that context?

aditya8062 · Answer

B should be the answer 
for correct parallelism we need : cities, filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that turned up, and interviewing

saicharantej99 · Answer

Will the option "cities, filmed neighbourhoods,digitized photographs that turned up, and interviewed" be correct? As all these activities are being done by the anthro team, I believe the parallelism is being maintained.

aditya8062 · Answer

no that would be a faulty parallelism .we can only make things parallel that are supposed to be parallel .
Anthropological research teams visited several Afghan cities .this team further did 3 different things there and hence those 3 things are supposed to be parallel

Nevernevergiveup · Answer

Anthropological research teams visited several Afghan cities doing few things
 1. filming neighborhoods, 
2. digitizing old photographs that are turning up and 
3. interviewing locals to better understand the aftermath of the decade-long conflict.

A. cities, filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that are turning up and interviewing
Team digitizes the old photos that turned up. This needs to be in simple past tense rather present tense as in given sentence.

B.   cities, filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that turned up, and interviewing

C. cities, filmed neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that turned up, and interviewed........... all 3 items are not in one tense thereby ruining parallelism.

D. cities and filmed neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that are turning up, and interviewed..........
  and  instead of verb+ing modifier 
present tense error as in A
parallelism error as in C

E. cities, filmed neighborhoods, digitized old photographs, turned up and interviewed......... turned up as an independent event and seems to indicate that photos are tuned up and inteviewed locals as well does not make sense at all.

Helium · Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

Understanding the meaning of this sentence, along with understanding participial modifiers, is the key to this question. This sentence attempts to say that researchers visited these places, and that among the activities they performed when doing so they filmed, digitized, and interviewed.

Choice A is close, but the modifier "that are turning up" next to "photographs" sets the actions in the present tense, when we know from the verb "visited" that this all happened previously. Choice B corrects that error, and is therefore correct. Choices C and D illogically use the participial modifier "digitizing old photographs" to modify a logically-separate action "filmed neighborhoods". D also creates an improper list, linking the verbs "visited and filmed...and interviewed". And choice E illogically adds "turned up" as a verb in the list of past-tense events. What may seem upon a visual scan to be a valid list ("visited, filmed, digitized, turned, and interviewed") has a bizarre meaning; what does "turned up" mean in that context?

Prasannathawait · Answer

visited cities, filmed neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that turned up, and interviewed locals

They visited, filmed, and interviewed. They have done these three things. 
They filmed neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs.

How can this be wrong? 
"Digitizing photographs" is properly modifying filming activity.

Where am I going wrong?

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi! This is  not  an entirely correct interpretation.

filmed neighborhoods  would mean making a  film  ( video ) of neighborhoods; this activity is  different  from the activity of  digitizing old photographs .

Prasannathawait · Answer

Ya, that's what they have done. They made a film of neighborhoods (filmed neighborhoods).

Why this option is incorrect?

VeritasPrepErika · Answer

C is definitely the hardest answer choice to eliminate, as it isn't grammatically incorrect at all. Expanding on what  EducationAisle  said, it comes down to meaning: digitizing photographs is not something you do while you are filming. Filming is one activity, while digitizing photographs is another — film and photography are two totally distinct media. It doesn't make sense for "digitizing photographs" to modify "filmed" because it does not describe any part of filming process. Instead, it describes a separate process.

On the other hand, filming, digitizing, and interviewing are all things that you are likely to do when you are visiting, so B (which has "filming", "digitizing", and "interviewing" all modifying "visited") makes logical sense. Note here that "filming" and "digitizing" are listed as two separate list items, which makes sense, given that they are two separate activities.

lakshya14 · Answer

Shouldn't the parallelisms start with "visited"?

CrackverbalGMAT · Answer

Hi Lakshya

This is a typical trap set in parallelism questions on the GMAT. You must be able to clearly identify which items fall in the "list", and hence, must be parallel. Often, one of the items acts as a superset (for want of a better word), with all the other items forming  a part of  of the superset. In such cases, the superset must be kept outside the parallel structure and parallelism applies only to the items which form the list.

For example, consider the following sentence:

Sophie spent her entire quarantine period indoors, read books, listened to music, and watched television.

In this sentence, Sophie has "read", "listened" and "watched", all as part of spending the quarantine period indoors. Therefore, only these three must be in the list of parallel items, and not "spent", since that is the superset which encompasses the list of parallel items. The following structure is perfectly correct.

Sophie spent her entire quarantine period indoors, reading books, listening to music, and watching television.

Applying this to the question at hand, we can see that the team performed the activities of "filming", "digitizing" and "interviewing", all as part of visiting Afghan cities. Therefore, "visited" must be kept outside the list of parallel items, which must only comprise of the other three.

Hope this helps.

thangvietnam · Answer

if we see comma+doing, we have to find a meaning relation between this phrase and the main verb. if we dont see any meaning relation, the phrase could be wrong.

there are many meaning relations between comma +doing and the main verb, some of them cause, circumstance, detail relations.

if we find that there could not be any meaning relation between them, the sentence is wrong.

TusharViv · Answer

Hi I was under the impression that a noun + comma and ing verb meant that the noun before the comma was being modified. In this case 'cities' are being modified. Cities aren't the one 'filming' so I eliminate those answer choices. Why is this process incorrect?

headofthetable · Answer

Anthropological research teams visited several Afghan  cities, filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that are turning up and interviewing locals to better understand the aftermath of the decade-long conflict.

(A) cities, filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that are turning up and interviewing - This option has just one verb - VISITED - and three VERB-ING modifiers - FILMING...DIGITIZING...INTERVIEWING. Such a construction is 100% valid  however focus on the second verbing modifier. 'That are turning up' does not make sense with an action (VISITED) in the past . INCORRECT.

(B) cities, filming neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that turned up, and interviewing - CORRECT

(C) cities, filmed neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that turned up, and interviewed - This option has 3 verbs - visited, filmed and interviewed. VERB-ING modifier - digitizing old photographs - is supposed to modify the previous action - filmed neighborhoods.  Now please ask yourself if filmed and digitizing  OLD PHOTOGRAPHS  have anything in common? The modifier is not modifying the action! INCORRECT

(D) cities and filmed neighborhoods, digitizing old photographs that are turning up, and interviewed - This option is a || disaster. 3 verbs - visited, filmed and interviewed.  But why two 'AND' to describe about 3 verbs ? INCORRECT

(E) cities, filmed neighborhoods, digitized old photographs, turned up and interviewed - The portion - turned up - is out of place. INCORRECT

Abhishek009 · Answer

Anthropological research teams visited several Afghan cities, 
  filming  neighborhoods, 
 digitizing  old photographs that turned up, and 
 interviewing  locals to better understand the aftermath of the decade-long conflict.

Must be (B) for correct use of parallelism rule...

Anthropological research teams visited several Afghan cities, filming

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

Anthropological research teams visited several Afghan cities, filming

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards