Hello Everyone!
Let's take a look at this question, one issue at a time, and narrow it down to the correct choice quickly! To begin, here is the original question with any major differences between the options highlighted in
orange:
Found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate, hummingbirds' range extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sea-level rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.
(A) Found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate,
hummingbirds’ range extends(B) Found only in the Western Hemisphere
, hummingbirds survive through extremes of climate,
their range extending(C)
Hummingbirds, found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate,
with their range extending(D)
Hummingbirds, found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate,
their range extends(E)
Hummingbirds are found only in the Western Hemisphere, survive through extremes of climate,
and their range extendsThere are a lot of things we can focus on here, so let's look at some big-picture issues first, and see how much we can narrow down our choices:
1. Modifiers
2. Parallelism
3. Subject-Verb AgreementLet's start with #1 on our list: modifiers. We can see from the options given that they contain modifiers, which are a common grammar issue on the GMAT. For each sentence, we need to make sure the modifiers and antecedents match up. We also need to make sure that, without the modifiers, the sentence is still complete with a subject and verb. Here's how things shake out when we focus just on modifiers:
(A) Found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate, hummingbirds’ range extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sea-level rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.This is
INCORRECT because the modifier "Found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate" should refer to hummingbirds, NOT the hummingbird's range! We can rule this out because the modifier and antecedent don't match up.
(B) Found only in the Western Hemisphere, hummingbirds survive through extremes of climate, their range extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sea-level rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.
This is
OKAY for now. The subject "hummingbirds" matches up with the modifier "Found only in the Western Hemisphere" clearly. Also, if we remove all of the modifiers and non-essential clauses, we're still left with a complete sentence:
Found only in the Western Hemisphere, hummingbirds survive through extremes of climate,
their range extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego,
from sea-level rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.
(C) Hummingbirds, found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate, with their range extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sea-level rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.
This is
INCORRECT because there is no verb! We only have a subject (Hummingbirds) with 3 modifiers. If we cross out all 3, there is nothing left!
(D) Hummingbirds, found only in the Western Hemisphere and surviving through extremes of climate, their range extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sea-level rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.
This is also
INCORRECT because there is no verb! It's another example of a subject (Hummingbirds) with 3 modifiers attached.
(E) Hummingbirds are found only in the Western Hemisphere, survive through extremes of climate, and their range extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sea-level rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.
This is
OKAY for now. There are no issues with modifiers in this one!
We can eliminate options A, C, & D because they all have problems with modifiers.Now that we have things narrowed down to only 2 choices, let's take a closer look at each one to find the better choice:
(B) Found only in the Western Hemisphere, hummingbirds survive through extremes of climate, their range extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sea-level rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.
This is
CORRECT! The modifiers and antecedents match up and make sense, and there aren't any other grammar issues we can find!
(E) Hummingbirds are found only in the Western Hemisphere, survive through extremes of climate, and their range extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from sea-level rain forests to the edges of Andean snowfields and ice fields at altitudes of 15,000 feet.
This is
INCORRECT because it doesn't use parallel structure! A common method writers use to fix sentences that contain several modifiers is to turn them into lists. There's nothing wrong with doing that - but make absolutely sure that each item is written using parallel structure!
There you go - option B is the correct choice! It uses modifiers correctly, and doesn't have any issues with parallelism!
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