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27 Jan 2020, 14:35
Kudos
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egmat
Hi Shraddha,
I am a E-Gmat student. I have a doubt here
"Now, “cultivating” and “exploiting” cannot be parallel to “harvesting of” because the first two are gerunds – the “-ing” form of verbs that act as noun but denotes action. Whenever the sentence requires the noun form of any word, we must write the real noun form of that word and not the gerund form."
I understand “cultivating” and “exploiting” are gerunds, what i dont understand is why is “harvesting" not a gerund, it too ends with -ing.
one more thing, where can i find this rule in the E-gmat material ?
28 Jan 2020, 11:34
Kudos
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sankarsh
Hello sankarsh,
Thank you for the query.
The word harvesting just by itself can certainly act as a gerund. For example, Harvesting crops is his main occupation.
However, the moment the verb-ing noun word is followed by the preposition of, it becomes a regular noun because gerunds are not followed by a preposition. So, the phrase harvesting of is a noun that is grammatically parallel to other noun entities cultivation of... and exploitation of... in the correct answer choice.
Now, these three noun entities can also be written as gerunds or verb-ing noun forms to form a grammatical list. The entities will be cultivating such crops as..., harvesting fish and shellfish, and exploiting other wild and domestic resources. However, none of the answer choices use this structure to present a list of three gerunds or the verb-ing noun forms.
The concept Roles of Verb-ing Words in the Foundation Concepts Module deals with this usage.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
28 Jan 2020, 23:42
Kudos
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sankarsh
Hi sankarsh, elaborating further on Shraddha's reply, that's actually the crux of the issue: cultivating and exploiting are not necessarily gerunds (noun forms of the verb); they can be participles (adjective forms of the verb) as well.
For example:
United Nations penalized the exploiting country.
Here, exploiting is used as a present participle (an adjective), modifying the noun country.
On the other hand, in the following example:
United Nations criticized the exploiting of the colonies.
Here, exploiting is used as a Gerund (a noun), implying that the act of exploiting (and not explicitly the country itself) was criticized by the United Nations.
Of course, one would correctly argue that a better way to articulate the sentence, is to use a pure-play noun form exploitation:
United Nations criticized the exploitation of the colonies.
Summarily, the point is that verb forms cultivating, exploiting, harvesting etc. can be used both as participles and as gerunds. Hence, wherever the intent is to use the verb form as a gerund, GMAT prefers to prefix these verb forms with the and suffix these verb forms with a preposition such as of. That way, we are giving a clear indication that the verb form is being used as a gerund.
p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses this usage of "Gerunds", its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.
