Hello! Your posts are very helpful to me. I have a question. In letter B, you said that "adapting" is wrong because it modifies Estrucan alphabet. For sentences that contain comma + gerund, how do we know what the gerund modifies? How can you say that it modifies Estrucan alphabet? Can't it modify the entire phrase "which in turn had been adapted in the previous century from a western Greek alphabet," ?

Right now, I completely understand that words such as Which modify the immediate word to its left. I have no problems with that. The confusion arises when I see gerunds and I don't know what it's supposed to modify.

I completely get why A is correct, I just want to improve my skills in detecting errors, that is why im asking more about letter B.

Thank you so much!

GOOD question ....it is redundant but in this case we have double "HAD" ... I think we must show which has priority
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In GMAT, there are some grammar rules that cannot be flouted and there are stylistic guidelines that are optional. Use of past perfects when the timeline is explicitly made clear with the use of earlier, after, before or mention of sequential years falls into the second category. GMAT itself is not as fastidious about this as some of us tend to take it as gospel.
Look at the following examples.

Retailers reported moderate gains in their November sales, as much because of their sales of a year earlier being so bad as that shoppers were getting a head start on buying their holiday gifts.

(A) of their sales of a year earlier being so bad as that
(B) of their sales a year earlier having been as bad as because
(C) of their sales a year earlier being as bad as because
(D) their sales a year earlier had been so bad as because
(E) their sales of a year earlier were as bad as that

OA: D.

For at least two decades or more previous to when the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo died in 1770, he was the most admired painter in Italy.

A. For at least two decades or more previous to when the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo died in 1770, he was
B. For at least two decades before the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo died in 1770, he had been
C. For at least two decades or more before the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's dying in 1770, he had been
D. When the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo died in 1770, for at least two decades previously he was
E. When the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo died in 1770, having been for at least two decades before that

OA B

She was less successful after she had immigrated to New York compared to her native Germany, photographer Lotte Jacobi nevertheless earned a small group of discerning admirers, and her photographs were eventually exhibited in prestigious galleries across the United States.

(A) She was less successful after she had emigrated to New York compared to

(B) Being less successful after she had emigrated to New York as compared to

(C) Less successful after she emigrated to New York than she had been in

(D) Although she was less successful after emigrating to New York when compared to

(E) She had been less successful after emigrating to New York than in

OA C

The question under discussion also can be taken as one more such example. It might be prudent for us not to make or break a choice on the use of past perfects on this ground.
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VeritasKarishma GMATNinja
ChiranjeevSingh
Why option d is wrong

Having + verb is also used to denote that some action completed before another action completed

Posted from my mobile device

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Perhaps Utkarsh, but I would like to draw your attention to the fact that all the 5 options use itself. So, redundancy (if at all there is any), is clearly a non-issue here.

The reason I highlight this, is because test-takers do need to develop an eye for quickly figuring out the differences in the five options, so as to evaluate what really matters for that question.
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Keep it simple. The incorrect choices B-E are each terribly wordy.

In the seventh century B.C., the Roman alphabet was adapted from the Etruscan alphabet, which in turn had been adapted in the previous century from a western Greek alphabet, which itself had been adapted earlier in the same century from the Phoenician alphabet.

(A) which itself had been adapted earlier Correct
(B) adapting itself earlier
(C) itself being adapted earlier
(D) having been earlier adapted itself
(E) earlier itself having been adapted
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past perfect is used to show an action preceding another point of time in the past. if the time point is clear, we dont use past perfect, but simple past. consider

I had passed gmat in 2000
I passed gmat in 2000

the first sentence mean I passed gmat before 2000. the second means I passed gmat in 2000

though choice A is best and I think that this problem dose not test past perfect and I dont like the way gmac uses past perfect in choice A.

Hey souvik101990 is the usage of past perfect necessary as an earlier time frame is already mentioned in the sentence.

Also is there any article on the double usage of past perfect in a sentence? Help will be appreciated.

Gagan

MartyTargetTestPrep, GMATNinja, egmat, can you please shed some light on the usage of having been + past participle in choice D and E?

Hello CrushTHYGMAT,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, "having been...adapted" in Options D and E is a participle construction (rather than an active verb phrase); in Option D, it modifies the preceding clause to (incorrectly) convey a cause-effect relationship, and in Option E it modifies the noun "itself", which refers to the noun phrase "a western Greek alphabet".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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One can use "Had" only once in a sentence to indicate most past event right?
How option A is correct as its using "had" twice? (even if one had is referring to past event than other had)

There's no reason why you can't use past perfect (had + "-ed" verb) more than once in a single sentence.

We have THREE past actions here. The first past perfect verb is used for something that happened before the simple past verb. The second past perfect verb is used for something that happened before the first past perfect verb.

The past perfect basically tells us that the action happened before some other past action/time marker. In (A), we simply do that twice, and the modifiers ("In the seventh century," "in the previous century," "earlier in the same century") help us keep the timeline straight.

In short, the use of two separate past perfect verbs is totally justified here and actually helps to keep things clear.

For more on verb tenses on the GMAT, check out this crusty old video.

I hope that helps!
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