Found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of

Here's (E), pasted into the full sentence:

Hummingbirds are found only in the Western Hemisphere, survive through extremes of climate, and their range extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sealevel rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.

The easiest way to eliminate (E) is by thinking about parallelism. "And" always indicates some sort of parallelism, right? In this case, "and" is followed by a noun ("their range...").

But that doesn't work here, because the first part of the sentence is setting us up for a list of verbs: "Hummingbirds are found only in the Western Hemisphere, survive through extremes of climate, and their range extends..." Structurally, the list gives us a verb ("are found"), another verb ("survive"), and then a noun ("their range"), and that doesn't work. It might be OK if there was an "and" before "survive", but that's not the case here.

I hope this helps!
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warriorguy, are you cool with gmatexam439 's excellent explanation above? Let me know if that doesn't answer your question, and I'll give it a shot.
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Wow! Finally I got an appreciation from GMATNinja.
It feels like I am in heaven, trying different cuisines.

Thank you Charles, it really motivated me a lot and I hope to try to answer all the questions directed at you and earn more motivation than before.

Regards

Lol, glad that I could help keep you inspired! And your definition of heaven is spot-on: I'm pretty sure that heaven is a gigantic food hall, serving cuisine from 170 countries.

I also love that you're following abhimahna's path: he spent a lot of time beating me to the requests for expert replies, especially in the SC forum. That was pretty cool: it's a whole lot more valuable for you guys to figure out the answers than for me to do it. Plus, I may or may not be lazy.

Have fun studying!
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Hello GMATNinja and Other Experts,

Even if Option E had "extends" as a verb in the parallelism list, the sentence would still not make sense

It would mean Hummingbird does the following three things
1. Found in...
2. survives....
3. extends...

#1 and #2 are ok for meaning but #3 is describing something about Hummingbirds. Hence Grammatically #3 might make sense, but logically it doesn't make any sense. Is my understanding correct? Please let me know your thoughts
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I have a doubt in option B, "their range" does not have a verb . I mean "Hummingbirds" have their subject as "survive" but their range does not have

Sorry, pikolo2510, I'm supremely late to the party on this. But yes, you're exactly right! As written, the problem with (E) is the parallelism: "Hummingbirds are found only in the Western Hemisphere, survive through extremes of climate, and their range extends..." That absolutely doesn't work, because we have a verb, another verb, and then a clause -- not just a verb -- in that last spot, after the "and."

And even if you remove "their range" from (E), you'd still have a problem, exactly as you indicated: "Hummingbirds are found only in the Western Hemisphere, survive through extremes of climate, and extends..." That's still wrong, partly because "hummingbirds extends" has a subject-verb agreement problem, but also because the hummingbirds themselves don't actually "extend".


A lot of (proverbial) ink has been spilled in the SC forums on this sort of structure. The main (independent) clause in (B) is "hummingbirds survive through extremes of climate", right? The thing that follows should NOT be another independent clause, though! That would be wrong: you can't join two independent clauses with only a comma.

And in (B), the thing after the comma isn't a clause at all: it's actually a modifier, specifically a noun phrase (with its own modifiers attached) that modifies the previous phrase. So the phrase "... their range extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego..." is just a noun phrase that modifies the main clause, "hummingbirds survive through extremes of climate." No problem there.

For broadly similar examples, check out these two QOTDs:

• https://gmatclub.com/forum/qotd-naked-m ... l#p1846468
• https://gmatclub.com/forum/qotd-the-nob ... l#p1970033

I hope this helps!
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Is it possible to eliminate answer choices based on parallelism in the opening modifier? Answer choices A, C and D all contain the phrase, "Found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate,...". Are these two pieces parallel even though one is a past participle and one is a present participle?

egmat VeritasPrepKarishma GMATNinja

What shall be optimum way to write (E) correctly as per GMAC?
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Hello tommyg,

I am not sure if you still have this doubt. Here is the answer nonetheless.

Let's begin from the basics. Those entities make a list that play the same role in a sentence.

In this official sentence, found is a verb-ed modifier and surviving is a verb-ing modifiers. Both are noun modifiers and modify the same noun entity hummingbirds. Hence, these modifiers are perfectly parallel.

See, being parallel does not mean that the entities in the list must look identical. They must have the same role in the sentence. Another official example of such parallelism is as follows:

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.

The two highlighted modifiers fall in the non-underlined portion of the sentence.

For more details on such "Imperfect List" and official examples, please review our popular article in the following link:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/parallelism-imperfect-list-142791.html


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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Hello Arpit/ adkikani,

Choice E can be corrected in the following way:

Hummingbirds are found only in the Western Hemisphere and survive through extremes of climate, and their range extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sealevel rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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one question here........
Is this not a fragment? where is the coordinating conjunction (FANBOY) ?
conjunction between ........extremes of climate, their range extending.......

Is a conjunction not needed coz "their range extending from several ...." is, in fact, not a clause at all ? its a phrase !
If so, what is the phrase modifying or describing??

this is a good question, got tricked so easily !

Hi grsm, you are correct. their range extending from several.... is not a clause.

It is (what's called) an Absolute modifier whose construct is:

Noun (their range) + Noun modifier (extending from several ....)

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Absolute modifier, its application and examples in significant detail. If someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.
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Sentence Analysis
As we read the sentence, we see that something is found only in the Western Hemisphere and that this thing survives through extremes of climate. As we reach the comma after this couple of modifiers, we expect the thing which is modified. However, we come across “hummingbird’s range”. Clearly, it doesn’t make sense to say that the range is found in a region and that the range survives through extremes of climate. It is clear that we want to modify hummingbirds. So, here we have our first error in the sentence.

Then as we read further “extends from A to B, from C to D”, we realize that this part is definitely referring to a range. So, in this context, the subject of the sentence “range” makes sense.

Therefore, we have one error in the original sentence.

Hi GMATNinja and other experts,

There is a peculiar doubt regarding absolute modifiers. In this case the correct choice:


Here, noun + noun modifier, their range extending...., is modifying the previous clause , hummingbirds survive through extremes of climate...
I am not able to visualize how "their range extending from xyz...." provides "how" or "why" aspect or show result of the previous clause action?
If I say hummingbirds survive through extremes of climate because their range extends from xyz...will it be correct? is my understanding in line?

Thanks.
Ankush

Hi

The modifier does tell us the outcome of the previous clause.
The humming birds can survive the extreme climates and this results in they surviving in Alaska etc and also at sea levels rain forests or at snow clad areas.
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Option C: found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate

If you notice here, "And" is supporting verb phrase 'found' and verb+ing modifier 'surviving'.... which is not parallel.

Also, "with their range" is unidiomatic.. so you can remove option C.

Hi abhi94agg, this is not correct reasoning. found is not used as a verb here; it is used as a past participle, while surviving.. is a present participle. So, both are grammatically parallel to each other.

A similar official example that comes to mind:

First discovered more than 30 years ago, Lina's sunbird, a four-and-a-half-inch animal found in the Philippines and resembling a hummingbird, has shimmering metallic colors on its head; a brilliant orange patch, bordered with red tufts, in the center of its breast; and a red eye.

The reason C is not correct, is because there is no verb in the entire sentence! (every complete sentence must have a verb).

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses how to distinguish between "Simple Past Tense verb" and "Past participle", its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.
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GMATNinja
Happy New Year! I am confused on the part that is not underlined and wanted to clarify with you just to better my understanding.
How can you say "from..., from..." and then end the sentence?
I really want to add an "and" to connect these two parts and then get rid of the comma ---> "from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego AND from sealevel rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet."

Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

KarishmaB
Gently follow-up to see if you have any insights. Thank you for your time.