Verbal Expert Topic That “-ing” word probably isn’t a verb

Verbal Expert Topic That “-ing” word probably isn’t a verb

Let’s start with a pop quiz, because we’re cruel like that.

Is the parallelism in this sentence correct?

• Amber traveled the world, eating international cuisine and contracting tropical diseases.

We’ll say more about this sentence at the end of the post, but here’s a wrong answer that I often hear from newcomers to GMAT SC: the sentence is incorrect because “the three verbs are not parallel to each other.”

Whenever I hear that answer, I know that my student is assuming that “eating” and “contracting” are both verbs. And in most cases on the GMAT, those “-ing” words aren’t verbs at all – but it’s an easy mistake to make.

So what should you do whenever you see an “-ing” word on the GMAT? Well, that “-ing” word could serve any of four different purposes on the exam – and it’s probably not a verb.

Four uses of –ing words

1) “-ing” verbs (progressive tenses)

Sure, it’s possible for an –ing word to be a verb, but this usage is relatively rare on the GMAT. Here are a couple of examples:

• Mike is surfing like a world champion today.
• Mike was surfing when he realized that he truly, deeply loves the GMAT.

If you like jargon, you could say that both of these verbs are in the progressive tense. This family of verb tenses is used only to indicate an ongoing action.

Trouble is, this verb tense doesn’t appear very often on the GMAT. And more importantly, the “-ing” word can only be a verb if it is immediately preceded by some form of “to be.”

So in our original sentence, “Amber traveled the world, eating international cuisine and contracting tropical diseases”, the “-ing” words aren’t verbs at all, since they aren’t preceded by “to be.”

On to option #2:

2) “-ing” nouns (gerunds)

The second possibility for “-ing” words is that they can be used as nouns (also known as gerunds if you like grammar jargon). A couple of examples:

• Surfing makes Mike happy.
• Charles’s hobbies include eating.

In most cases, "-ing" nouns are easy to spot on the GMAT: they’re clearly either the subject or an object of the sentence. For the most part, these won’t cause you a whole lot of trouble on GMAT SC.

So let's move on to usage #3:

3) “-ing” modifiers, part I: participles

On the GMAT, “-ing” words are most often used as modifiers; if you like grammar jargon, feel free to call them participles. A few examples:

• Walking through the forest, the pig happily hunted for truffles.
• Laughing maniacally, the airline’s security personnel knocked a few teeth from Dr. Dao’s mouth.

In both cases, the phrase beginning with the “-ing” word modifies the entire clause that follows. In the first sentence, “walking through the forest” gives us extra information about what was happening when “the pig happily hunted for truffles.” Notice that the "-ing" modifier must "make sense" with the subject, too: it's reasonable to say that the pig is capable of walking through the forest.

The same is true of the (considerably less pleasant) second sentence: the modifier “laughing maniacally” gives us more information about the entire scene aboard a certain aircraft.

The GMAT’s favorite trap here is to give you a modifier that simply doesn’t make sense with the subject of the main clause. Here’s a fairly obvious example:

• Walking through the forest, the mushrooms were colorful.

If we look at this strictly and literally, the sentence is saying that the mushrooms are walking through the forest. That’s fine if we’re playing Super Mario Brothers, but it doesn’t make sense on the GMAT.

Bottom line: when you see an “-ing” modifier (NOT a verb or a noun) at the beginning of the sentence, the GMAT is asking you to verify that it actually make sense with the subject of the clause that it modifies, even though the "-ing" word often modifies the entire clause. And you’ll see this over and over and over again on GMAT SC.

4) “-ing” modifiers, part II: adjectives

The fourth and final use of “-ing” words is that they can be nice, boring adjectives:

• The man resembling Steve Buchemi has bad teeth.
• The woman leading the meeting is the company’s CFO.

These aren’t terribly interesting, to be honest: in the first case, “resembling” just modifies the man, and in the second case, “leading” just modifies the woman. Adjectives… yawn.

But here’s the thing: if you aren’t careful, you can get tricked into making mistakes with these adjectives, particularly when parallelism is involved. Here’s an example, very loosely based on an official GMAT question:

• The angry politician, frustrated by the opposition’s parliamentary tactics and screaming about the other parties’ unconstitutional behavior, is both a hypocrite and a narcissist.

A common error would be to say that “frustrated” and “screaming” aren’t parallel to each other, since they “don't sound the same” or because they “aren’t the same tense.” But “frustrated” and “screaming” are both adjectives that modify "the angry politician". So there’s no problem here at all.

And keep an eye on @souvik103990’s magnificent new Verbal Question of the Day series – you’ll see at least one example of this type of parallelism this week.

Back to our example

Remember this sentence?

• Amber traveled the world, eating international cuisine and contracting tropical diseases.

By now, you know that “eating” and “contracting” aren’t verbs, since they don’t include any form of “to be.” And since they aren’t the subject or object of the sentence, they aren’t nouns, either. Clearly, we’re dealing with modifiers here -- and if you saw this on the actual exam, the GMAT would be asking you to verify that the modifiers actually make sense with the clause they modify.

And in this case, the modifiers seem fine: “eating international cuisine” and “contracting tropical diseases” are just giving us more information about Amber’s activities when she “traveled the world.”

Want more?

• Here’s nice rundown of how “-ing” and “-ed words can be parallel to each other: https://gmatclub.com/forum/verb-ed-verb ... 26923.html
• Here’s an older thread that focuses exclusively on “-ing” modifiers: https://gmatclub.com/forum/usage-of-ver ... 35220.html
• Coming up in our next Topic of the Week: a rundown of the uses of “-ed” words on the GMAT. They’re awfully similar to “-ing” words, but with a few small twists.
• Want to discuss exciting “-ing” words, scintillating “-ed” words, or other riveting GMAT verbal topics? Join us every Wednesday (8 am PST/8:30 am IST) for the verbal experts’ weekly chat.