Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson,

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended core meaning of this sentence is that Deborah Sampson joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Tenses + Grammatical Construction

• If a list contains only two elements, they must be joined by a conjunction; the "comma + and construction" (oxford comma) is used for the last element in a list of three or more elements.
• The passive continuous tense is only used to refer to ongoing actions.
• The introduction of the present participle ("verb+ing"- “having” in this case) after comma generally leads to a cause-effect relationship.

A: Correct. This answer choice uses the phrase "was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783"; the construction of this phrase conveys the intended meaning - that Deborah Sampson joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, and as two separate actions was injured three times, and discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve. Further, Option A correctly uses the past perfect tense verb "had become" to refer to the earlier of two actions that concluded in the past - Sampson becoming too ill to serve and her being discharged. Additionally, in a list of three elements Option A correctly uses a comma to join the first and second. Moreover, Option A avoids the grammatical construction error seen in Option B, as it only has a list with three elements.

B: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "while being discharged"; the use of "while" illogically implies that Deborah Sampson was injured three times, at the time when she was being discharged; the intended meaning is that Deborah Sampson was injured three times, and a separate action she was discharged; please remember, "while" is used to refer to actions that take place simultaneously. Further, Option B incorrectly uses a comma to join two elements in a list - the actions "joined" and "was injured"; please remember, in a list with only two elements, the elements must be joined by a conjunction.

C: This answer choice incorrectly uses the passive continuous tense verb "being" to refer to the earlier of two actions that concluded in the past - Sampson becoming too ill to serve and her being discharged; please remember, the past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past", and the passive continuous tense is only used to refer to ongoing actions. Further, Option C incorrectly uses the "comma + conjunction ("and" in this sentence)" construction to join the first and second elements in a list with three elements; please remember, the "comma + and construction" (oxford comma) is used for the last element in a list of three or more elements, and the rest are joined by a comma.

D: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "injured three times"; the construction of this phrase leads to an incoherent meaning; the intended meaning is that Deborah Sampson joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve. Further, Option D incorrectly uses the simple past tense verb "was" to refer to the earlier of two actions that concluded in the past - Sampson becoming too ill to serve and her being discharged; please remember, the past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past", and the simple past tense is used to refer to actions that concluded in the past.

E: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "having been injured three times and discharged in 1783"; the use of the "comma + present participle ("verb+ing" - "having" in this sentence) illogically implies that Deborah Sampson joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22 because she had been injured three times and discharged in 1783; the intended meaning is that Deborah Sampson joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, and as two separate actions was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783; please remember, the introduction of the present participle ("verb+ing"- “having” in this case) after comma generally leads to a cause-effect relationship. Further, Option E incorrectly uses the passive continuous tense verb "being" to refer to the earlier of two actions that concluded in the past - Sampson becoming too ill to serve and her being discharged; please remember, the past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past", and the passive continuous tense is only used to refer to ongoing actions.

Hence, A is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



To understand the concept of "Past Perfect Tense" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

|| lism is tested here..

Only A follows it, Hence, A.

joined ....was injured ..was discharged...

Always remember, what comes with the middle string in || lism , that should come in the final string..

Here, was is used with injured but not with joined..so, was should come with last string to follow || lism..

I agree that "D" is incorrect because "injured" should be "was injuredd"

but in A "had done" happens before "joined". this is not logic

why A can be correct? pls explain.

No, thats not the case over here. It is of supreme importance to understand the meaning before diving into Grammar. Remember, Grammar is nothing but a set of rules to communicate the meaning in a better way

So, what does the sentence talks about i.e Meaning : The sentence talks about a Deborah Sampson and defines a list of 3 items about her. What are they-
1- joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22,
2- was injured three times, and
3 - was discharged in 1783 because she had become too
ill to serve.

Now, had becomhe is used for doing the sequencing with the action "DISCHARGED", not with the ACTION "joined". If you are still in doubt, check the clause(clause C1) - "because she had become too ill to serve." --> This clause is Subordinate to the Clause (clause C2)- "Deborah was discharged"
i.e Clause C1 is working as an adverbial modifier of the Clause C2

i.e it gives the explanation to why Debrah was discharged, - answer is - because she had become too ill. - this shows that she was ill from a distant past, and then some time in the past(ofcourse after the first event), she got discharged.

Hence, Had become is used to show sequencing with the verb discharged.

Another thought -
Had the sentence been;

was discharged in 1783 because she became too ill to serve. the meaning would have that both the events happened at the same time, and have the same importance.

Maybe experts can pitch in.

Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier’s pension, joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

A. 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become- Verb sequencing is correct
B. 22, was injured three times, while being discharged in 1783 because she had become- Changes the original meaning when it says 'while being discharged'
C. 22, and was injured three times, and discharged in 1783, being- Being ill to serve becomes a modifer and it should be close to the noun. Also being changes the meaning
D. 22, injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she was- injured three times is a modifier or looks like. So hold it
E. 22, having been injured three times and discharged in 1783, being- Same as C

We need correct parallelism. Injured and discharged need to be parallel

A) "was injured" and "AND was discharged" both use the same type of verb (past participle), preserving the same "form" of verbs is paramount for correct parallelism. Furthermore, the "and" before "discharged" indicates immediately that this option is correct because THREE verbs are being paralleled (joined.. was injured.. and was discharged..) all three have the same past participle. You ALWAYS have to add "and" to the third parallel when using >2 entities in your parallel structure.

B) "was injured" is not parallel to "while being discharged".. B is gone

C) "and" after injured is superflous, this creates redundancy when discharged brings up "and" again. Also, and prior to injured implies only joined and injured are parallel, but this is incorrect. C is gone

D) The past participle "injured" needs to have a was/were, depending on if the subject is singular or plural. Deborah is singular, so we need "was injured". Injured on its own creates a fragmented sentence. So D is wrong.

E) The first error that pops up is in fact not the the parallel, but the ending word "being". Being is often a red flag, in this case this present participle does not make sense since we are talking about a event that happened a long time ago and is not still going on. Other than that, "having been" does not nicely follow "joined" and thus the prallel structure is distorted. So E is gone.

A is the correct answer.

Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier’s pension, joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

A. 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become
B. 22, was injured three times, while being discharged in 1783 because she had become
C. 22, and was injured three times, and discharged in 1783, being
D. 22, injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she was
E. 22, having been injured three times and discharged in 1783, being

No problem with the underlined part of the sentence.

My question is on the opening modifier.

Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff

How come a verb-ed modifier parallel to verb-ing modifier.

Hi @Mission2012,
First of all I am glad that you are viewing the sentence in its entirety and are not just focusing on the underlined portion of the sentence. Secondly, a verb-ing modifier and verb-ed modifier can definitely be parallel to each other. Please go through the article on this topic in the link below:
parallelism-imperfect-list-142791.html

Do let me know if you have any other questions.
Regards,
Payal

Hi Payal,

Though A is right choice and has a list, isn't this Q a case of single subject with many verbs?

e.g. She Joined the Army, was injured three times, and was discharged.

Could you please clarify if this is not a run on sentence? Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Ashish

Hi Ashsish,

Thanks for posting you question here.

Yes, you are absolutely correct. This is certainly a question with single Subject that has multiple Verbs. And all the Verbs are part of a parallel list in which all the entities are perfectly connected to each other with the conjunction "and".

This is CERTAINLY NOT a run-on sentence. A sentence is called a run-on sentence when two Independent Clauses (ICs) are joined together just with a comma. For example: if we write this sentence in the following way, then it will be called a run-on sentence:

She joined the Army, she was injured three times.

Structurally this sentence is incorrect because a Comma CANNOT join two ICs.

You might have gotten confused about the run-on structure in this sentence because you probably thought that there are three clauses in this sentence because there are three verbs. But that's not the case. Every clause, be it Dependent or Independent, must have an exclusive SV pair. If a Subject has more than one Verb, then we still have ONE clause because the Verbs share the same Subject. In order to form two clauses, we need two exclusive SV pairs as we have in the run-on example sentence above.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
SJ

This doubt could be fairly basic but I would really appreciate if someone could help me clear my concept. In the above question I understand that 3 verbs need to be parallel but why injured and discharged should appear with a helping verb while joined appears without a helping verb. How is parallelism maintained in this case. I really got confused with tense and verb basics.

Hi! Parallelism does not require that a helping verb can only be parallel with another helping verb. For example, following would be correct:

MarketingGuru was inclined to specialize in Marketing, but later majored in Strategy.

was, a helping verb, is parallel to the non-helping verb majored.

In the sentence under consideration, Deborah Sampson was injured three times is correct, because we actually cannot remove was, since the meaning would be non-sensical: Deborah Sampson injured three times would non-sensically mean that Deborah Sampson injured <someone> three times. This is clearly not the intended meaning.

Is the use of past perfect mandatory? Is the below sentence correct?
I was discharged from hospital because I felt better.
or past perfect is needed?

Hi b2bt, There is a slight difference between the current sentence and the one you have cited.

This is ok: I was discharged from hospital because I felt better. - Past

But this is not: I was discharged from hospital because I felt well for 10 days. - Past

What would be correct is: I was discharged from hospital because I had felt well for 10 days. – Past Perfect

Similarly, in the current sentence:

This is ok: Deborah Sampson was discharged because she was too ill to serve. - Past

But this is not: Deborah Sampson was discharged because she became too ill to serve. - Past

What would be correct is: Deborah Sampson was discharged because she had become too ill to serve. – Past Perfect

They key difference is obviously phrases such as for 10 days and become too ill, both of which indicate a process that started in the past and continued till the time that the other event in the past happened (the event of discharge in this case). This is when past perfect is used.

In any case, even if you thought that simple past was ok, and chose option D, hope it was clear that injured is used as a verb in option D, thereby suggesting that Deborah Sampson actually injured someone else; in reality, Deborah Sampson actually was injured. This meaning is not coming out in D.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Past perfect tense, its application and examples in significant detail. If someone is interested, PM me your email-id, I can mail the corresponding section.

Quoting Ron

(A) 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become --- correct choice

(B) 22 was injured three times while being discharged in 1783 because she had become -- meaning changed; it implies that she was injured during her discharge

(C) 22 and was injured three times, and discharged in 1783, being -- and was and discharged – lapse in parallelism
(D) 22, injured three times and was discharged in 1783 because she was –lapse in parallelism, not clear whether she injured or she was injured. Injured and was discharged is ungrammatical.

(E) 22, having been injured three times and discharged in 1783, being -- having been …modifies her joining the army at 22, implying as though she joined the army because she was injured three times; being as a modifier is also incorrect.

This a perfect example to how little, one needs to do to get a correct answer in GMAT.
This sentence is laden with modifier and adjective phrases, which for all purposes can be removed and thus leaving us a clean easy sentence to analyse and correct.

Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shuttieff,Deborah Sampson , the first woman to draw a soldier's pension, joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

Now the sentence become
Deborah Sampson joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

(A) 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become
Correct :- injured and discharge are parallel. "Had become" is correct because first she become ill and then after a few days/weeks was discharged. When we have two past actions use to "had" is correct for the older action and simple past is used for newer actions.

(B) 22, was injured three times, while being discharged in 1783 because she had become
Wrong:- Meaning change. She did not become ill while she was being discharged.

(C) 22 and was injured three times, and discharged in 1783, being
Wrong:- "being too ill to serve" is incorrect. Makes the voice passive.

(D) 22, injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she was
Wrong:- "injured three times" is incorrect. was injured three times should be correct.

(E) 22, having been injured three times and discharged in 1783, being
Wrong:- Tenses are all wrong; having, injured are not parallel. Sentence all sorts of problems.