ashmit99 wrote:
nocilis wrote:
Five hundred million different species of living creatures have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent of them vanishing.
(A) Five hundred million different species of living creatures have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent of them vanishing.
(B) Nearly 99 percent of five hundred million different species of living creatures that appeared on Earth have vanished.
(C) Vanished are nearly 99 percent of the five hundred million different species of living creatures that appeared on Earth.
(D) Of five hundred million different species of living creatures that have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent of them have vanished.
(E) Of the five hundred million different species of living creatures that have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent have vanished.
SC16020.02
Hello experts,
I have a few doubts in this question.
1. What is the role of "vanishing" in option A? Is it acting as a verb or a modifier? And why is A wrong because of vanishing?
2. What is wrong with option B? I was stuck between B and E.
ChiranjeevSingh GMATNinja VeritasKarishma AndrewN Skywalker18 AjiteshArunThank you in advance!
Hello,
ashmit99. It looks as if I have gotten to this query early enough not to be third in line. (I would still respond if I felt I had something new to add, other than to say that the other Experts had already done a fine job.) In (A),
vanishing is indeed a problem. It seems to be filling the role of a verb, particularly if you examine the other answer choices. However, we cannot ignore the missing helping verb in
to have or
to be to make that interpretation stronger:
nearly 99 percent of them are vanishing, for instance, leaves no room for interpretation. But, of course, that is not what we are dealing with. It seems that the word is instead modifying
them, which itself refers to
species, or, if you prefer the fuller version,
different species of living creatures. A new issue arises when you consider what, exactly,
vanishing may be modifying. Are the species vanishing from the face of the Earth, as the other sentences seem to imply in their own way, or are the species highly developed in the camouflage department, such that they can make themselves vanish (and be described as vanishing species of creatures)? Because the earlier usage of
have appeared leads us to believe that some of these species may not exist in the present, we expect
have vanished, an actual verb, to follow up on that idea.
Vanishing as a modifier simply does not work in the sentence.
As for (B), the meaning of the sentence is open to interpretation because
appeared within the embedded clause at the end—not
have appeared—does not present a clear timeline. Are we commenting only on species from the past? (Choice (E), by contrast, extends into the present.) Did all
five hundred million different species of living creatures co-exist? Were dinosaurs walking around with dodos and woolly mammoths? I know this sounds silly, but the simple past conjugation of the verb suggests as much, or at least we cannot argue that it does not. Choice (E) is a safer bet, in terms of the meaning it conveys.
I hope that helps clear your doubts. Thank you for thinking to ask.
- Andrew
_________________
I am no longer contributing to GMAT Club. Please request an active Expert or a peer review if you have questions.