Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and

Hey Shraddha,

Moreover, please refer to this sentence in the Sydney Morning Herald's environment section
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/clima ... 2bayh.html

Between 2000 and 2010, the report said, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost $1.07 billion in revenue when comparing each state's best snowfall years with its worst snowfall years


E>A grammatically but not sure about the meaning aspect.

Hi Shraddha,
Thanks for posting both challenging questions and the explanations
But I still feel that Placement of 'between 2000 to 2010' after 'lost' makes the meaning ambiguous. LOST b/w 2000-2010 dollars?? people?? no quantifier is mentioned

if it were 'between the year 2000 to 2010' then it would have been clear.

That why I didn't choose E since I didn't feel it was the best option

Do we choose E just because the other 4 options are grammatically inaccurate?

Thanks

A math book with diagrammatic representations and which explains all the concepts lucidly is a good math text book.
I somehow would incline to agree that this sentence is parallel.

Since discussion on this question is happening concurrently on BTG as well, I am posting Payal's response on BTG over here so that GMAT Clubbers can benefit from it.

This construction is not correct. We cannot have a phrase parallel to a clause. In fact there are multiple ways of making this list parallel, such as:

1: Ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people (Here both entities are phrases)
2: Ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people (Here both entities are clauses)

Just an interesting side note –This sentence also appears in nytimes here. In fact both publications have the same article. It was published just a day before the article on Sydney Morning Herald was published. Not sure if there is a tie up between these two publications. But regardless of that - carefully notice the list in the nytimes article. It uses the correct parallel construction per option 1 above.

Again, it is possible that this was just a publishing error or an error that did not get caught through the editorial process. Happens, after all “To err is Human”

Hey Shraddha,

I could pick up the the //m error in A but I thought that E has some what more erroneous modifier placement which (I felt) didn't state the intended meaning clearly
so went with the best available option ie A

Moreover, please refer to this sentence in the Sydney Morning Herald's environment section
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/clima ... 2bayh.html

Between 2000 and 2010, the report said, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost $1.07 billion in revenue when comparing each state's best snowfall years with its worst snowfall years


E>A grammatically but not sure about the meaning aspect.

@dentobizz -good questions & discussion on the other forum and I am posting the nyt article link below that you gave there regarding parallelism (Hope you don't mind) .The article is pretty informative, nice find doc

an article that discusses similar parallelism errors including this one
https://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... roblems-2/

Good discussion souvik101990!

The above construction is not considered correct in written English. A phrase cannot be made parallel to a clause. Let's consider a few official questions to understand this point:

OG13 Question # 46

In ancient Thailand, much of the local artisans’ creative energy was expended for the creation of Buddha images and when they constructed and decorated the temples that enshrined them.

For the sake of this discussion, we will only focus on the parallelism aspect of this sentence. The list is as follows:
Creative energy was expended
1: for the creation of Buddha images
2: when they constructed and decorated the temples that enshrined them

The list above presents the tasks on which the creative energy was expended. Clearly the list is not parallel since phrase has been made parallel to clause. In fact the Official Explanation clearly states " clause introduces faulty parallelism".

OG13 Question # 13
There are several ways to build solid walls using just mud or clay, but the most extensively used method has been the forming of bricks out of mud or clay, and, after some preliminary air drying or sun drying, they are laid in the wall in mud mortar.

Once again, we will only focus on the parallelism aspect of this incorrect choice. And without going into too many details here, I will quote official explanation here "the active gerund phrase the forming of bricks does not fit with the passive verb phrase that follows (they are are laid)"

So essentially you cannot make a phrase parallel to a clause. I hope this addresses your confusion.

Regards,
Shraddha

Good discussion souvik101990!

The above construction is not considered correct in written English. A phrase cannot be made parallel to a clause. Let's consider a few official questions to understand this point:

OG13 Question # 46

In ancient Thailand, much of the local artisans’ creative energy was expended for the creation of Buddha images and when they constructed and decorated the temples that enshrined them.

For the sake of this discussion, we will only focus on the parallelism aspect of this sentence. The list is as follows:
Creative energy was expended
1: for the creation of Buddha images
2: when they constructed and decorated the temples that enshrined them

The list above presents the tasks on which the creative energy was expended. Clearly the list is not parallel since phrase has been made parallel to clause. In fact the Official Explanation clearly states " clause introduces faulty parallelism".

OG13 Question # 13
There are several ways to build solid walls using just mud or clay, but the most extensively used method has been the forming of bricks out of mud or clay, and, after some preliminary air drying or sun drying, they are laid in the wall in mud mortar.

Once again, we will only focus on the parallelism aspect of this incorrect choice. And without going into too many details here, I will quote official explanation here "the active gerund phrase the forming of bricks does not fit with the passive verb phrase that follows (they are are laid)"

So essentially you cannot make a phrase parallel to a clause. I hope this addresses your confusion.

Regards,
Shraddha

Hi egmat

I recall reading in mahattan SC guide that two parallel clauses start with the same subordinator to remove ambiguity.

The correct option here uses "which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, "

Please correct me if i am wrong, but I believe that it should be " which has centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, "

Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this Forum. Your post's are nothing short of Excellent

Official Explanation

Sentence structure of Original Sentence

• Clause 1 - Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and
• Clause 2 - which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly,
• Clause 1 (contd.) - lost $1.07 billion in revenue, owing to the warming trend that forces half the nation’s ski areas to open late and almost half to close early.

Meaning of Original Sentence

• The sentence is about the ski and snowboarding industry.
• Certain characteristics of industry presented - # of centers and # people employed.
• This industry lost specific amount of money in revenue between 2000 and 2010.
• The reason for the loss in revenue has been specified as – warming trend that forces the ski areas to open late or close early.

Errors in the Original Sentence

• Clause 1 - Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and
• Clause 2 - which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly,
• Clause 1 (contd.) - lost $1.07 billion in revenue, owing to the warming trend that forces half the nation’s ski areas to open late and almost half to close early.

1: Parallelism error – “with” prepositional phrase modifier is not parallel to “which” relative clause modifier. Both should be either relative clause modifier or prepositional phrase modifier.

Answer Choice Analysis

A. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost
Parallelism Error as discussed above.

B. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly between 2000 and 2010, lost
Modifier Error – Highlighted modifier does not modify the action “lost”. It now implies that 187000 people were employed between the given time period. This results in change in meaning of the sentence.
Note that the parallelism error in choice A has been corrected. Both are phrase modifiers now. One is prepositional phrase modifier and the other is verb-ing modifier.

C. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing
SV Error – The main clause does not contain any verb. The subject “ski and snowboarding industry” does not have a verb. The verb “lost” in original sentence has been changed to non-verb form “losing”.

D. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry between 2000 and 2010, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing
SV Error – As in choice C.
Modifier Error – The highlighted modifier instead of modifying the verb – lost - modifies the industry. It somehow implies that the sentence is about ski and snowboarding industry that existed between 2000 and 2010. This does not make sense. As such logically there is only one ski and snowboarding industry and not about the industry that was between a certain time period.

E. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost, between 2000 and 2010,
Correct Choice

Take Away

1: Clause entity cannot be parallel to a phrase entity. There can be more than one ways to correct such a list. Write both in either phrase form or clause form.
2: Modifiers should be placed appropriately to modify the intended entity.

Regards,
Shraddha

AndrewN - I just have one silly question-

How in the correct option E the second parallel entity is a clause (S+V), as there is no "subject"..?

E. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost, between 2000 and 2010,

employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly
verb = employees
subject = ??

which has centers in 38 states
verb = has
subject = which