In undisturbed primary forests, the Honduran mahogany grows

Question

In undisturbed primary forests, the Honduran mahogany grows  up to a height of 130 feet, having a buttressed trunk and a crown that spread  over the canopy of lesser trees.

(A) up to a height of 130 feet, having a buttressed trunk and a crown that spread
(B) up to 130 feet in height, and with a buttressed trunk and a crown spreading
(C) to as high as 130 feet in height, having a buttressed trunk and with a crown that spread
(D) to a height of 130 feet, with a buttressed trunk and with a crown that spreads
(E) as high a height as 130 feet, having a buttressing trunk and a crown spreading

comma + with (adverbial modifier) =    LINK 1  &  LINK 2  &  LINK 3  &  LINK 4  &  LINK 5  &  LINK 6  &  LINK 7

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/04/science/advocates-of-sustainable-mahogany-harvests-counter-boycott.html

Bigleaf or Honduran mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) is the quintessential tropical rain forest tree. In undisturbed primary forests, it grows  to a height of 130 feet, with a buttressed trunk and a crown that spreads  over the canopy of lesser trees. International trade in mahogany for shipbuilding, fine furniture, cabinetmaking, musical instruments, coffins and other uses has been intense since the 1500's, and the supply of another type called West Indian mahogany, found on Caribbean islands, was exhausted early in this century. Trees of marketable size are now scarce or inaccessible in Central America, and the vast forests of Brazil and Bolivia are the source of much of today's mahogany lumber.

daagh · Accepted Answer

Hi, guys! to make life simple, let’s just delve on the core issues.

First get rid of the choices that contain ‘crown that spread”, a blatant SV error. A and C are gone.

Now get rid of E that says ‘as high a height as’ for the flagrant redundancy.

Now B is gone because the sentence turns unparallel with a clause and a phrase being joined by ‘and’.

What are we left with? Just D; Let’s accept it on the face of it because that is the only grammatically correct choice and so the best of the lot.

confidently submit and go to the next question. You will be lucky if you get such an easy question.

Good luck

sivasanjeev · Answer

First method of elimination 
A. up to a height of 150 feet -->  redundant. Either it should be 'up to 150 feet' or 'to a height of 150 feet' 
B. up to 130 feet in height -->  same issue as A 
C. to as high as 130 feet in height -->  redundant and incorrect comparison as X as 
D. to a height of 130 feet -->  looks fine .
E. as high a height as 130 feet -->  same issue as C

Second method of elimination 
A.  having a buttressed trunk  and a crown that spread  -->  The  construction  is a participle phrase, which needs to be followed by a noun. Second thing, 'spread' is referring to the 'crown', so it should be singular ==> spreads should be used.
B. and with a buttressed trunk and a crown spreading  -->  the first 'and' after the comma should introduce an independent clause. But it isn't the case.
C. having a buttressed trunk and with a crown that spread  -->  Same issue in A
D. with a buttressed trunk and with a crown that spreads  -->  parallelism maintained. Crown agrees with 'spreads'
E.  having a buttressed trunk  and a crown spreading  -->   Participle phrase  needs to be followed by a noun.

One advanced concept, I would like to present here.

1.  Having a buttressed trunk , the tree grows to a height of...
->The underlined part is a participle phrase.
->It acts like an adjective.
->It normally is placed at the beginning of a sentence. (And hence, carcass's statement to avoid as much as possible HAVING because most of the time is wrong)

2. The tree grows  having a buttressed trunk .
->The underlined part is a gerund phrase.
->It acts like a noun.
->It should be the direct object of a verb.

carcass · Answer

In this such question lokk at a parallell structure and avoid as much as possible HAVING because most of the time is wrong. NOT always but most of the time

B is not parallel

D is right

Ask if something remains unclear

regards

MorningRunner · Answer

I understand that A is wrong because of pronoun issue... 
But, can anyone explain why "up to a height of 130 feet" is redundant.

what makes addition the word "up" redundant ?

Please help...

EducationAisle · Answer

What pronoun issue?

The easiest way to eliminate A is to understand the intended  meaning . It should be evident that the  crown  (of the Honduran mahogany) spreads over the canopy of lesser trees.

However, A says:  ....trunk and a crown that  spread ...

Since A uses a  plural  verb  spread , clearly  that  is modifying  trunk and crown , thereby implying that  trunk and crown  spread over the canopy of lesser trees! This is clearly nonsensical, since  trunk  cannot spread over the canopy of lesser trees.

MorningRunner · Answer

Hi Ashish,
Sorry for that. My mistake...
I agree with you.. There is no pronoun issue.. instead it is plural/singular issue..

Could you please help for my requested question?
>> why "up to a height of 130 feet" is redundant.
>> what makes addition the word "up" redundant ?

EducationAisle · Answer

When I look closely (and since you ask), I see that it should be either:

i) ..grows up to 130 feet
Or
ii) ..grows to a height of 130 feet

However, as I mentioned in my last post, there is a  larger   meaning  issue with A. Such issues should normally take precedence over  redundancy  issues.

apolo · Answer

Parallelism ,  Meaning

Meaning : it is only the  crown  that spreads  over the canopy of lesser trees

A. up to a height of 130 feet, having a buttressed trunk and a crown that spread

'spread' is plural, suggesting that 'trunk' and crown spread over which is not reasnable

B. up to 130 feet in height,  and   with a buttressed trunk and a crown spreading

' and ' produces a sentence fragment

'spreading' modifies both  trunk  and  crown , an illogical meaning

C. to as high as 130 feet in height,  having  a buttressed trunk and  with  a crown that  spread

two modifiers are not parallel: ' having a ... ' and ' with a crown '

Also, 'spread' should be 'spreads'

D. to a height of 130 feet, with a buttressed trunk and with a crown that spreads  Correct!

Repetition of 'with' separates the two items: 'trunk' and 'crown', making the 'crown' the only word that  spreads  modifies.

'spreads'  agrees with ' crown'

E. as high a height as 130 feet, having a buttressing trunk and a crown spreading

'spreading' again seems to modify both the 'trunk' and the 'crown', an unreasonable modification since  only  crown 'spreads'

icefrog · Answer

I have a few doubts in this question.

Clarification 1.

Here is a gist of the OE

A. Up makes it redundant because trees only grow upwards. And the relative pronoun - 'that' refers to a singular noun crown and hence 'spreads' should be used.
My reasoning- I do not understand this. Up to is used to say that the maximum height is 130 feet, and that the height ranges from 0-130. It has nothing to do with the fact that trees grow upwards. Is the OE wrong?
Also please confirm if the following rule is correct - 'the relative pronoun 'that' refers only to the immediately preceding noun. Or is it just so in this case, because of the intended meaning?

Clarification 2
In the correct option D, is the second 'with' necessary? Would it still be correct without the second 'with'?

Clarification 3

How do we know that the modifier 'with a buttressed trunk .....' is modifying the tree and not 130 feet(height). I know that is completely illogical. But say we had something like

In undisturbed primary forests, the Honduran mahogany grows like a mango tree, with a buttressed trunk and with a crown that spreads over the canopy of lesser trees.

Is the above sentence ambiguous?

Thank you very much!

daagh · Answer

Icefrog wrote

Clarification 1. In almost the all the cases, the restrictive pronoun ‘that’ will only refer to the preceding noun. The exception is in such cases when the preceding noun happens to be the modifier of yet another noun that is more relevant. It occurs mostly with nouns that are modified by prepositional phrases. Look at this example: 
I like Scotch from Scotland that is part of the UK. Here the relative pronoun cannot refer to Scotch and must necessarily antecede Scotland

But look at this variant

I like Scotch from Scotland that is aged more than three years. – Here ‘that’ cannot refer to Scotland logically. The prepositional modifier ‘from Scotland’ is an essential ingredient of that Scotch made in Scotland.

So maybe I would say the reference of relative pronouns is context driven.

Clarification 2

I would say it is necessary. Look at the parallelism. . ‘And’ is supposed to join two parallels. Without the second ‘with’, the combination becomes one of a prepositional phrase on one side and a noun phrase on the other. However, when you add the second ‘with’, it becomes perfectly parallel with two prepositional phrases. Maybe one might say, we can skip the second one, but nobody will object when the second one as added. I don’t think it will ever be an issue in the Test.

Clarification 3.

The first point is that the ‘with’ modifier with a comma before it is an adverbial modifier and hence would not refer to the noun before. It modifies the subject of the previous clause mahogany and its growing to 130feet. So even, if you put an eligible noun such as a mango tree before the ‘with’, it will not modify the mango tree, since an adverbial modifier is not a noun modifier but a verb modifier. Please note that the moment there is a comma before the modifier, be it either ‘with’ or a verb+ing modifier such as 'having', it will not modify the noun before. However, if you don’t have the comma before, then it will modify the noun lying before. In your revised statement, if you remove the comma before the ‘with’ then it will modify the mango tree forthwith. The difference is the comma.

DHAR · Answer

Hi,  daagh   chetan2u 
Can you please tell what is that referring here? "buttressed trunk and a crown" or "a crown"

chetan2u · Answer

Hi..
Here THAT refers to only crown..
Reason..
1) use of WITH separately with crown.
2) singular SPREADS points to a singular antecedents.

Hope it helps

beatingthegmat · Answer

How do we know that only crown 'spreads'?

Posted from my mobile device

GMATNinja · Answer

It's not hard to imagine the crown of a tree spreading - we've all, at some point, relaxed under a leafy canopy of spread branches. (And if you haven't, give it a try sometime.) Now try to imagine a  trunk  spreading. This could be a failure of my imagination, but I can't come up with any sort of image, aside from a bizarre image of a tree trunk melting into a puddle, like in the Terminator movies.

So here's a good unofficial rule of thumb: if the logic of a given sentence construction requires special effects, the construction is not good.

I hope that helps!

guptakashish02 · Answer

Skywalker18   carcass

if we have      and       , is this ok?
Consider A option, I am slightly modifying it.
(A) to a height of 130 feet,  having a buttressed trunk  and  a crown that spreads

carcass · Answer

No simply because of the sentence loses consistency and clearness.

Moreover, from the sentence, you wrote both the trunk AND the crown spread to somewhere.......which is impossible.

I mean the trunk is the main part of a tree, the body of a tree, and the crown is on top and blah blah blah.

Eventually, the scenario is this:

two sentences with grammar issues - different from each other 
  two sentences both grammatically fine - the meaning is different, so you go for the one that has a concise construction and less wordy 
 the meaning is quite similar or fine - the problem between the two sentences is somewhere else

Regards

DrWho · Answer

Following seems to remain unanswered:
"Up to is used to say that the maximum height is 130 feet, and that the height ranges from 0-130. It has nothing to do with the fact that trees grow upwards. Why is it redundant?"

mikemcgarry   GMATNinja

Could you clarify if there is an issue with meaning?

1. Shouldn't 'grows up to' mean that max height is x?
2. Shouldn't ' grows to' mean that the tree will definitely grow to x height?

3. Meaning-wise, why is 'grows to' correct in this question?

DmitryFarber · Answer

DrWho 
It's true that "grows to" expresses a surprising degree of certainty. Surely not every tree reaches this height! However, A means the same thing. To express a range, we'd need to put "up to" right in front of the measurement: "grows to a height of up to 130 feet." This isn't the best way to say it--I'd rather say something like "can grow as high as 130 feet"--but it would convey the idea.

As for why "grows to" is correct, the issue is more that this answer doesn't have any other flaws. We don't want to assume that every split has just one right answer--that's only true of the question as a whole. All the choices other than D have errors in the modifier after the comma, so D is our only contender.

DrWho · Answer

DmitryFarber

Thanks for the explanation!

The main confusion I had was between D and E.

Although in E "as high a height as 130 feet" is awkward, and 'spreading' could also modify trunk, awkwardness doesn't seem to be a huge issue in GMAT and regarding 'spreading', even with the ambiguity, it will be highly illogical for 'spreading' to modify trunk. Aditionally, I don't see any issue with 'a crown spreading over the canopy of lesser trees'.

So for D vs E,
it is meaning issue ('grows to' rather than 'grows up to' or 'grows as high as') VS awkwardness and possible ambiguity (which to be honest doesn't seem to be too ambiguous. 'spreading' modifying crown seems correct while 'spreading' modifying both crown and trunk seems illogical)

From what I've learned so far, meaning issues should be given priority over awkwardness and minor ambiguities. 
Isn't that correct? What am I missing here?

Infact, I thought D was a trap answer.

In undisturbed primary forests, the Honduran mahogany grows

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

In undisturbed primary forests, the Honduran mahogany grows

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