Chimpanzees are humans’ closest relatives, share 98% of the genetic DN

It should be D.

All elements are in parallel out there. And verb-ing modifier correctly shows how property of verb-ing modifier.

Hi experts,
Want to know when use of being is right ?
GMATninja2, plz help.

I know there are few concepts tested in this question that is Modifiers, Parallelism and Sentence structure.

I can easily eliminate answer A, B, C and D but I still need more clarity with the overall construction of answer E for future reference.

Ans E says - "Chimpanzees are humans' closest relatives" which is an Independent Clause, followed by Adv-Modifiers and 'Comma + Conjunction + IC', but the parallel construction looks flawed, and the pronoun 'They' is also ambigous.

First the parallel Structure - "sharing 98% of the genetic DNA, leading complex social lives, eating both plants and animals" - the parallel rule says, the element should be arranged in a manner A and B if 2 items or A, B, and C if more than 2 Elements.

So the ideal parallel structure should be - sharing 98% of the genetic DNA, leading complex social lives, and eating both plants and animals.

The usage of Pronoun 'They' is hideous. Let's consider the 2nd clause as IC - they are handy with tools - Now "They" can refer to Relatives from the earlier clause or it can refer to the main subject 'Chimpanzees '. I don't think this kind of ambiguity is acceptable in GMAT.

But if you remove "They" then the the 2nd clause will be in parallel form i.e.

1. Chimpanzees are humans??? closest relatives, sharing 98% of the genetic DNA, leading complex social lives, and eating both plants and animals. (I have added 'AND' which is not present in the original answer choice E)

2 Chimpanzees are handy with tools . - Removed pronoun "They"

parallelism after verb 'ARE'.

Would appreciate if any expert can review and share his thoughts/comments.

Thanks,
Tilak

I'm sorry, but this is in no way a valid question.

First, while D is superficially parallel, that particular list of elements is not truly parallel in its content. Only the first item in the list ("sharing . . . DNA") can reasonably modify the initial clause. It explains how chimps are our nearest relatives. The other items in the list are just random things that we have in common with many creatures, from orangutans to birds! That consideration alone completely eliminates D-E, and since the other choices fail for their own reasons, that leaves us with no good answer. Even if A-C were revised, we wouldn't want to present all these items as a random, disconnected list, either. The whole thing just needs to be redone.

Further, while there is certainly no rule against the use of "being" in SC, there's a reason so many of us learn to avoid the word in most constructions, and D gives us a good example. We shouldn't use "being" to try to turn an adjective ("handy") into an activity ("being handy"). It may seem to fit grammatically, but it doesn't make that part a reasonable match for the other items in the list.

Additionally, "the genetic DNA" is redundant and unidiomatic. The sentence should just say "DNA." (Even if we wanted to distinguish between germline and somatic DNA, both types are still genetic.)

Traj201090
I wouldn't spend too much time on this one, but we can tell by the OA that the intent was for the last part with "they" to be one of the items in the list. Adding "they" was just a way to ruin the parallelism. There's no reason to separate out that item in particular, so while could fix this grammatically by ending the previous list with AND before moving on to the tool part, that still wouldn't make for a good sentence.