|
|
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.
Customized
for You
Track
Your Progress
Practice
Pays
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
30 Jul 2020, 01:19
Kudos
Bookmarks
kornn What stands out to me most about E is how badly it garbles the meaning. First, the restrictive modifier (that) makes it appear that we are trying to narrow down which SET of Kirchoff's laws we are dealing with: "one of K's laws THAT was an observation." Even if it turns out that K had many such observations among his laws, there's no reason to contrast these from any others right now. Then we have the odd use of commas to set off "first made in 1845" from the rest. This sounds like the "first" is going to be contrasted with some later action, but then all we get is "and is now included," which would have to be parallel with the earlier "was an observation." As we've gotten into above, this doesn't work here, even if there's no blanket rule about switching tenses, but even if it worked perfectly, it would leave that "first made" modifier hanging by itself to no purpose.
31 Jul 2020, 01:43
Kudos
Bookmarks
sandalphon
I made an error again in my second attempt and chose E over A.
GMATNinja
I understood what you said here.
GMATNinja
In my pursuit to eliminate E can i say that the structure of E is as follows:
In 1995 Richard Stallman[prep. phrase], a well-known critic of the patent system[appositive phrase - without it the sentence is not impacted], testified[simple past tense verb] in Patent Office hearings[modifies verb 'testified'] that[modifier], to test the system[modifier], a colleague of his had[past perfect tense - signify another event that happened earlier than testifying] managed to win a patent for one of Kirchhoff's laws that[essential modifier modifying laws] was[simple past] an observation about electric current, first made in 1845[appositive phrase modifying observation], and[does not signal parallelism but a part of modifier that started with previous 'that'] is now[together 'is now' does not create any problem and help further in elaborating the modifier] included in virtually every textbook of elementary physics.
If I think E this way, I have hard time eliminating E and this is what i thought so while solving under timed condition.
Another meaning could be:
Taking the last part of E '1845, and is now included in virtually every textbook of elementary physics', the 'COMMA + and' signifies a list in which the first element is 'had managed ... 1845' and second element is 'is now ... physics'. Thus meaning-wise it tells that the colleague is now included in physics textbook.
If I think it this way it becomes easier to eliminate since in A 'an observation .... elementary physics' is a complex modifier modifying 'patent' which is better than E.
Am I right in 2nd my understanding??
Please correct me if I'm making mistakes in sentence structure/meaning.
31 Jul 2020, 18:10
Kudos
Bookmarks
unraveled The trouble is that you are using grammar rules to demonstrate that the sentence can be read as a grammatical English sentence (it can!) without considering the author's intended meaning. We don't have to go to the second meaning you suggest to see that E doesn't give us what we want. Take a look at my post on the previous page to see my take on the meaning troubles that E produces. They are a bit subtle, and not so outrageous as saying that a person is in a book, but they are still problematic enough to make E invalid.
