ashutosh_73 wrote:
Hi
AjiteshArunBelow are the two versions of Option A after adding the main verb ''IS''. The only difference is
a comma before ''allowing''Are the below two sentences convey the correct and same meaning?
1. El Niño, the periodic abnormal warming of the sea surface off Peru,
is a phenomenon in which changes in the ocean and atmosphere combine
allowing the warm water that has accumulated in the western Pacific to flow back to the east.
Here in ''changes in the ocean and atmosphere combine allowing'', does ''allowing'' modify the combine correctly? Its an adverbial modifier, right?
2. El Niño, the periodic abnormal warming of the sea surface off Peru,
is a phenomenon in which changes in the ocean and atmosphere combine,allowing the warm water that has accumulated in the western Pacific to flow back to the east.
Thanks
Hi ashutosh_73,
That's a good question. The biggest problem in option A is that it is a sentence fragment, and the second biggest is a meaning issue. Adding a verb would fix the first problem, and switching to an adverbial (
, allowing) would go a long way towards fixing the second. I would, however, still take this new version of option A out on the basis of a (different) meaning call.
Modified option A gives us the following sentence:
1. El Niño is a phenomenon in which changes in the ocean and atmosphere combine, allowing the warm water that has accumulated in the western Pacific to flow back to the east.This, to me, is not as good as the sentence the correct option leads to:
2. El Niño is a phenomenon in which changes in the ocean and atmosphere combine to allow the warm water that has accumulated in the western Pacific to flow back to the east.Option A tells us that El Niño is "
a phenomenon in which changes in the ocean and atmosphere combine". I think this is way too vague. The ocean and the atmosphere interact all the time, and not every such interaction is an El Niño. The correct option is much more specific: El Niño is "
a phenomenon in which changes in the ocean and atmosphere combine to allow the warm water that has accumulated in the western Pacific to flow back to the east".
I must stress that this is just my opinion. Since this is not an actual GMAT option, we can't know what the GMAT would think about the modified version of option A.