A pattern of accidents, of personnel problems, and of low performance

Question

A pattern of accidents, of personnel problems, and of low performance ratings for mechanical systems  have marked the servicing and maintaining  of the new power plant.
 
A. have marked the servicing and maintaining
B. have marked the servicing and maintenance
C. have marked the service and maintenance
D. has marked the service and maintaining
E. has marked the servicing and maintenance

sudarshan22 · Answer

+1 for   E  .

A.  have marked  the servicing and maintaining
B.  have marked  the servicing and maintenance
C.  have marked  the service and maintenance
D.  has marked  the  service  and  maintaining 
E.  has marked  the  servicing  and  maintenance   -->   Correct , rectifies S-V error, and entities are parallel '   the servicing  and  maintenance   '

Hence,   E  .

Nikhil · Answer

A pattern of accidents, of personnel problems, and of low performance ratings for mechanical systems have marked the servicing and maintaining of the new power plant.

A.  have  marked the servicing and maintaining

"A pattern" is singular subject and requires a singular verb "has"  INCORRECT 
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

B.  have  marked the servicing and maintenance

"A pattern" is singular subject and requires a singular verb "has"  INCORRECT 
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

C.  have  marked the service and maintenance

"A pattern" is singular subject and requires a singular verb "has"  INCORRECT 
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

D. has marked the service and  maintaining

"maintaining" of new power plant doesn't sound correct, it should rather be "maintenance"  INCORRECT 
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

E. has marked the servicing and maintenance

"servicing and maintenance of" sounds idiomatic.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hence option E

Terabyte · Answer

workout , can you please explain why Servicing sounds correct, while Maintaining does not?

Konstantin1983 · Answer

The difference between D and E is that "maintaining of new plant" doesn't sound correct while "servicing" alone is ok. To be 100% precise "service and maintenance" would be best option

Neuto123 · Answer

Can someone explain the reason to choose E over D from grammar point of view

Posted from my mobile device

Arro44 · Answer

Our first clue to eliminate answer choices is "has" vs. "have".
We are talking about "a pattern", hence we have to use "has".

Our second decision point is "servicing and maintenance" vs "service and maintenance", as we want to keep the parallelism intact we opt for the latter choice.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Chris

baru · Answer

D. has marked the service and maintaining
E. has marked the servicing and maintenance

If we consider full sentence --> Option D: has marked the service and maintaining of the new power plant.

either we say maintenance of the new power plant or maintaining the new power plant .
use of maintaining of is non-idiomatic .

similarly servicing of new power plant rather than service of new power plant.
Eg : you give a bike for servicing( cleaning) rather than to service .

SO E : has marked the servicing and maintenance of the new power plant --- Correct

Hope its helpful...

DmitryFarber · Answer

The trick here is that some English verbs have distinct noun forms and some don't. "Maintain" has the noun form "maintenance," while, for instance, "send" just has "sending." It can get complicated, depending on what exactly we're trying to say, but a good rule of thumb is that if there is a dedicated noun form, we should use it. For that reason, it might be nicer to say "service" (as a noun) than "servicing," but "service" has more possible meanings, so one could argue that "servicing" is clearer. In any case, since we should use the noun form "maintenance," E wins.

Try out this official problem that works with the same noun form issue:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/building-on- ... 30798.html

kitipriyanka · Answer

Sentence can be reduced as below:

A pattern of X, of B, and of C have marked the servicing and maintaining of the new power plant.
1. Pattern is singular, so had should be used
2. Maintaining is Modifier, we need noun

Due to 1 A,B & C are excluded

D. has marked the service and maintaining-2
E. has marked the servicing and maintenance-correct

Posted from my mobile device

vanam52923 · Answer

daagh  
need help on this ,i always get confused in such constructions
A pattern of accidents , of personnel problems , and of low performances : is singluar as pattern is singular ,my question is 
it can be read like 
a pattern of accidents , a pattern of personnel problems , and a pattern of low performances : then isnot it pluaral
if i belive that of is prep phrase so subject cannot be in prep pharse 
then should not it be 
a pattern of   : then singular 
but in that case how will i know personal problems and low performaces also are part of a pattern of .

If i see this question :
A surge in new home sales and a drop in weekly unemployment claims suggest that the economy might not be as weak as some analysts previously thought.

here a surge and a drop are two diff things so plural subjetc is claer
but say 
it had been 
1)a surge in new home sales and weekly employment 
what will it be : singular or plural 
will it be read like 
A) a surge in new home sales and a surge in weekly employemnt -- 
will this be plural or singular?
or as 
B) a surge in new home sales(something) and weekly employment (some other thing) -- this will be plural right?

Also had it been
a surge in new home sales and in weekly empolment 
how to read this 
D)a surge in new home sales and a surge in weekly employemnt
or E) a surge

Plz clear .
Thanks a lot

daagh · Answer

Vanam

Is a pattern singular or plural? To answer this answer the following questions.

How many times is the word 'a pattern' mentioned? Only one. Am I right? 
What is the need to imagine "a pattern of X, a pattern of Y and a pattern of Z when they are not given in the text?

Just try this tip; first practice to ignore all the prepositional modifiers ( even if there are 100 prepositional modifiers) in constructions such as "a noun plus a prepositional phrase" e.g a pattern of, a study of, a list of, a group of ' The prepositional phrase is simply a middleman and has no say in the issue of subject- verb number agreement. 
Then bring the verb next to the lonely subject and try to match. You will see the subject-verb agreement or diagreeent popping up in front of you.

1) a surge in new home sales and weekly employment
How many times a surge mentioned? Only Once and that decides the SV agreement because 'in new home sales and weekly employment" is only a prepositional modifier of a single surge.

P.S: What follows a preposition is the object of the preposition and therefore an object cannot be a subject unless it is converted. That an object can become a subject in a different context is not to be considered and confused just now. 
Takeaway: Strip a clause of all the frills and just narrow down on the subject and verb to decide the S-V agreement. Your problem will be solved.

vanam52923 · Answer

thank you so much

nishthagupta · Answer

Servicing acts as a Noun and is not parallel to maintaining (modifier)

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A pattern of accidents, of personnel problems, and of low performance

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A pattern of accidents, of personnel problems, and of low performance

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