ED FORMS - Verbs or Modifiers

Hi E-GMAT

Just in the reference of the above article , mainly on the how the Verb-ed modifier is derived, Could you please help me differentalting the two statement ,which are stated above and discussed in the article.

1. A leader guided his followers honestly earned immense respect from the mass.

2.Salt deposits and moisture threaten to destroy the Mohenjo-Daro excavation in Pakistan, the site of an ancient civilization that flourished at the same time as the civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of Tigris and Euphrates.

So in the statement 1.is very clear that the statement is in active voice . and guided and earned these two verb are not connected properly that leads to fragment error.

No in statement 2. if we remove that , then there is only one modifier flourished,which modify "the site of an ancient civilization ".

So my confusion is how does "that" helps here to remove the fragment here?. Flourished still modifying" the the site of an ancient civilization"

Could you please help me to highlight the main verb or whole sentence structures into clauses.

Thanks

Referring to the article mainly on "How the Verb-ED modifier is derived section".There are two sentence which are discussed in the article makes me a bit confuse.

1.A leader guided his followers honestly earned immense respect from the mass.

2.(OG12-#85) Salt deposits and moisture threaten to destroy the Mohenjo-Daro excavation in Pakistan, the site of an ancient civilization [b]that flourished at the same time as the civilizations [/b]in the Nile delta and the river valleys of Tigris and Euphrates.

My analysis and query...

The Statement 1 makes it very clear that guided and earned are not connected properly and the sentence is written in Active voice . So a relative pronoun is must in this statement.

But in Statement 2 ,even if you remove "That " the modifier flourished is modifying the civilization and i didn't see any other verb-ed or verb in the sentence after "that". So the statement seems correct to me.

Could you please Highlight the clauses in the sentence 2 and correct me where i'm going wrong?

Hi Nitin,

Thanks for posting you doubt here.

1. A leader guided his followers honestly earned immense respect from the mass.

So your analysis for this one is absolutely correct.

Now let's look at the official sentence:
Salt deposits and moisture threaten to destroy the Mohenjo-Daro excavation in Pakistan, the site of an ancient civilization that flourished at the same time as the civilizations in the Nile delta and the river valleys of Tigris and Euphrates.

(Subjects = blue, Verb = green)

The word "that" in this official sentence has been used as a Relative Pronoun. It modifies and provides additional information about the previous noun entity "an ancient civilization". Since, "that" is the Subject of the Dependent Clause that it starts, "flourished" acts as the Verb for this Subject. It is the ancient civilization that did the action of flourishing itself. "flourished" is NOT a Verb-ed Modifier here because it is not an action that was done on the ancient civilization by something else.

If we remove the relative pronoun "that" from the sentence, then "flourished" will directly become the Verb for the Subject "an ancient civilization". in that situation, we will have Two Independent Clauses connected with each other with just a Comma. This is not grammatical.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Hi Shraddha,

In the first sentence The lamp didnt not do the action of "Decorating" so it is modifier.
In the sentence "The lamp decorated the child’s room filled his room with innocent beauty." why we need to convert it into Relative clause by adding "that". As sentence can have modifier word and a verb right?

Please enlighten me.

Regards,
Rrsnathan.

Hi rrsnathan,

Let's take this sentence.

I decorated my room.

There is no doubt that here :decorated" is a verb because "I" - the Subject - himself/herself did the action of decorating the room.

Now let's take a look this one.

The lamp decorated the room.

Now here again, "The lamp" is the Subject and "decorated" is the Verb. Yes, this sentence is different from the sentence I presented above because here lamp is not a living being that used its hands to decorate the room. What this sentence conveys that the lamp adorned the room.

Now let's take the sentence that has confused you:

The lamp decorated the child’s room filled his room with innocent beauty.

Here again,
decorated" has been used in the same manner as it has been used in the second example presented above. So "decorated" is a verb here and Not a modifier. But again, there is one more Verb for the Subject "The lamp". That is "filled". A Subject CAN definitely have two Verbs, but they must be connected properly through a conjunction. We just CANNOT write two Verbs for one Subject side by side without joining them with a conjunction. So that's the problem here. We must do something so that the sentence remains grammatical. So there are multiple ways of doing that:

1. The lamp that decorated the child’s room filled his room with innocent beauty.
2. The lamp decorating the child’s room filled his room with innocent beauty.
3. The lamp decorated the child’s room and filled his room with innocent beauty.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Very succinctly put e-gmat. Kudos.. For the question put up in the topic below was my thought process. Could you please comment if it correct and more importantly could this fail me ?

Q - Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and root like tentacles spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago and extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

A. extending
B. extends
C. extended
D. it extended
E. is extending

In the above sentence we can see that the underlined portion is just a modifying phrase giving extra information , so if we omit that the sentence becomes

Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth........extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

Now we can see that only extending fits in .

Hi himanshujovi,
Thank you for the query.


• Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and root like tentacles spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago and extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

You have correctly identified that the highlighted part of the sentence is a modifier. However I want to add two points to your analysis:

1. A modifying phrase cannot end with ‘and’ as it is the case with the underlined portion “a giant fungus….years ago and”. So, the modifier extends till the end of the sentence i.e. “a giant fungus that….. Michigan forest.”

2. In the given sentence, you omitted the comma also while omitting the underlined part, but the comma is not the part of the modifying phrase. So, we cannot remove it.
Now, the presence of a comma before a verb-ing modifier can change the meaning of the sentence and the modified entity. Let’s understand the usage of verb-ing modifier:

USAGE I
If a verb-ing modifier is placed after a clause, and it is preceded by a comma, then it modifies the preceding clause. This modifier:
i) Either provides additional information about the preceding clause
ii) Or presents the result of the preceding clause.

Tom killed the snake, using a stick. (Additional information)
The recession adversely affected the company’s business, reducing its profits by 50%. (Outcome)


USAGE II
If a verb-ing modifier is placed after a clause and it is not preceded by a comma then it modifies the preceding noun.
He got into the cab waiting outside his house. (‘waiting’ modifies ‘the cab’)


Now, when we omit the highlighted part, the sentence becomes:
• Scientists have recently discovered
• what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

Now, since the verb-ing modifier ‘extending’ here is preceded by a comma, it should modify the entire preceding clause, and it should make sense with the subject of the preceding clause.
However it is not clear what the additional information presented by the modifier ‘extending’ is. Also, it does not make sense with the subject of the preceding clause ‘what’. So, this option is incorrect.

If you have any doubts in the understanding of the verb-ing modifiers please refer to the following articles:
usage-of-verb-ing-modifiers-135220.html
verb-ing-modifiers-part-2-in-our-first-article-on-verb-ing-135567.html




So, your understanding regarding the usage of the modifiers in this question is not completely correct. I would recommend that you go through the above articles to know more about the verb-ing modifiers and then come back to this question. If you have any more doubts regarding this, I’ll be more than happy to help.
Also, don’t forget to refer to Shraddha’s awesome explanation for this question at the beginning of this article. This explanation clearly states that the modifier 'extending' modifies "a giant fungus" in the original sentence. If we remove the highlighted part in this sentence, it won't be possible for 'extending' to modify 'a giant fungus'.

Hope this helps!
Regards,
Deepak

Hi russ9,
Thank you for the post.

Let’s do the sentence structure for the given sentence:
• The lamp
o decorated the child’s room
o filled his room with innocent beauty.

As shown, there are two verbs for the subject ‘the lamp’ in the given sentence. These verbs are not connected properly. So, either we need to connect these verbs using ‘and’ or we can provide another subject for one of the verbs. Now, let’s see how ‘that’ solves this problem:

• The lamp
o that decorated the child’s room
• filled his room with innocent beauty.

So, ‘that’ acts as the subject for the verb ‘decorated’ and now the sentence becomes grammatically correct.

Hope this helps!
Deepak

Hi @egmat/Shraddha,
One question regarding the litmus test. In one of the sentence for practice - "Our powers of color vision derive from cells in our eyes called cones, three types in all, each triggered by different wavelengths of light."- we concluded that "called" is a modifier as action of calling is not done by cells. This makes sense.

However, I was trying to apply the same concept to another usage of "called" and got confused. What is called in the sentence below :
"I am called Ravi."
Isn't "am called" the verb of the sentence? But if I apply the litmus test here, it would suggest that called is a modifier as the action of calling is still not done by the subject - "I". Right?

Am I making any mistake here? It would be great if you could help me clarify my doubt.

Thanks,
UrsTruly

Hi UrsTruly,
Thank your for the query.

You are absolutely correct in saying that “am called” is the verb of the sentence. Now, as we know “is/am/are” are usually followed by verb-ing form, but here “am” is followed by the past participle form. Why is it so? - Because this is a passive verb, not an active verb.

Let’s take an example:
• Harry completed the assignment.

Here, the verb is “completed”, and it makes sense with the subject “Harry”. Now, let’s change the sentence to passive voice:
• The assignment was completed by Harry.

In this sentence “completed” does not make sense with the subject “the assignment”. However, the verb here is “was completed”, which makes perfect sense with the subject “the assignment”. So, “the assignment” is not the subject of “completed”, it is subject of “was completed”. Now, can you apply the same understanding to your question?


Hope this helps!
Deepak

Whats the OA BTW.. Is it B in first Qs and E in second question? Good questions..just need the answer to cement the understanding on Verb-ed & Verb-ing.

Hi Zakir14,

The detailed solution of both these questions are present in this thread only. The OA for the first question is D and for the second one is E.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
SJ

I couldn't really follow how "extending" could be the right answer . I feel even the choice "Extending " as a verb in the present continuous form & not as a verb modifier .Kindly help here to clarify

extending can be a present continuous verb form only if it follows a helping verb - example : "were extending", "are extending"

Learning fast, Jane cracked GMAT <-- modifier
Jane , learning fast, cracked GMAT <-- modifier
Jane is learning fast, so he will crack GMAT <-- verb

FIRST OF ALL A NICE EXPLANATION GIVEN BY e-GMAT, but iw would be very kind of you, if you can help me with this...

The growth of the railroads led to the abolition of local times, which was determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing from city to city, and to the establishment of regional times.

(A) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing
(B) which was determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and which differed
(C) which were determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing
(D) determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differed
(E) determined by when the sun reached the observer's meridian and differing

After reading e-gmat explanation, i was able to eliminate a/b/c options....Now the problem is between D/E. I am unable to find out whether in phrase local times differed from city to city( is the action of differing being done by local times or .......??) in first modifier its clearly mentioned local times determined BY, which makes easy to spot beacause of preposition By used which clearly tells that action has been done by some external factor, but in case of differed , it becomes complicated....

Please help ....@e-gmat

Hello gmatify17,

I will be glad to help you with this one.

In Choice D, the word differed is a verb because the local the local times themselves differed from city to city.

Let me present a simple example sentence to make the usage clear.

Local time differs in each of the six time zones in the Unites States.

My project differs from yours in its approach towards problem solving.


In both the above-mentioned sentences, differs acts as a verb.

Same is the usage of the word in simple past tense in Choice D. Hence, this choice stands incorrect because the modifier determined and the verb differed cannot be grammatically parallel.

Choice E rectifies this error by replacing the verb differed with the modifier differing.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Hello kaarya58,

I am aware that you wrote this post long time ago. Nonetheless, here is an easy explanation to understand why any word ending in "ing" and not preceded by an helping word such as is/am/are/was/were/ etc cannot act as a verb.

A verb has three traits:

i. It must have a tense - Past, Present, or Future.
ii. It must have a number - Singular or Plural.
iii. It must have a voice - Active or Passive.

Now can we specify the tense of the word extending? Also, is it singular or plural? Which voice is it written in?

We cannot answer any of these questions just be looking at the word ending in "ing". Now take a look at the following sentences:

Harry was watering the plants in the morning.

The students are planning to organize a party for the teachers.

They all will be going to the concert this weekend.

Needless to say that just be looking at the helping verbs that precedes each of the "ing" word in the above-mentioned sentences, we know about the tense and the number of the verbs. Also, all these verbs are written in active voice.

Hence, we need a helping verb to precede an "ing" word for it to act as a verb.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha