zoezhuyan wrote:
hi
mikemcgarry Here is a practice from
Magoosh, I need your help
Dante Rossetti and his colleagues, in calling their group the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, sought a return to the classical ideals of painting that held sway before Raffaello, to what governed the work of 15th century artists such as Sandro Botticelli.
A) Raffaello, to what governed the work of 15th century artists such as Sandro Botticelli
B) Raffaello, artistic principles that would govern the work of 15th century artists such as Sandro Botticelli
C) Raffaello who governed the work of 15th century artists like Sandro Botticelli
D) Raffaello by which the work of 15th century artists such as Sandro Botticelli was governed
E) Raffaello that had governed the work of 15th century artists like Sandro BotticelliQuestion #1
As the explanation, it is a parallelism,
to classical ideals parallel to
to what governed the work of 15th century artistsI am curious, why there is no parallel mark, such as "and" , between these two parallel parts
Question #2
I am always confused what does
"preposition + which" refer to? does it refer the immediate preceding noun?
this phrase "by which" appears
because "which" cannot refer to people, why "which" does not refer to "ideals" ?
waiting for your reply
Thanks in advance
have a nice day
Zoe
>_~
Dear
zoezhuyanI'm happy to respond, my friend.
Question #1:
It's not exactly right to say that this is standard parallelism. It's really an appositive phrase, which is a special case of parallelism. See:
GMAT Grammar: Appositive PhrasesSuppose I were to say:
I wrote this blog article about the verbal genius at Magoosh, about Chris Lele.
According to that sentence, the blog article was not about two different people--the "
verbal genius at Magoosh" and "
Chris Lele" are one and the same. Those are two ways to refer to the same person. That's an appositive phrase. An appositive phrase is a special case of parallelism, but notice that we do not use the standard conjunctions that we would use in ordinary parallelism. Using "
and" would imply that there were two different people and that contradicts the meaning of the sentence.
In the OA of this sentence, the "
classical ideas" and "
what governed the work of 15th century artists" are not two different things--they are also one and the same, because this is also an appositive phrase modifier. Once again, the word "
and" incorrectly would imply that these are two different things, contradicting the meaning of the sentence.
Does this make sense?
Question #2:
Are you familiar with the idea of a vital vs. non-vital modifier. See:
That vs. Which on the GMATGMAT Grammar: Vital Noun ModifiersWhenever we have
[comma] + "which" or
[comma] + [preposition] + "which", of course we expect such a noun-modifying phrase to "touch" the target noun. A vital noun modifier, though, has the ability to come between the target noun and such a noun-modifying phrase. As a general rule, if you see
(noun modifier)(noun modifier)(noun modifier) + [comma] + "which"then you may well have to "swim upstream," swim up all those modifiers, to find the target noun from which everything hangs.
In this sentence, in the incorrect answer (D), we have
. . .
Raffaello by which the work of 15th century artists such as Sandro Botticelli was governedWe know that the person, the great artist,
Raffaello (1483 - 1520), cannot be the target noun. This name is part of a modifier, which I'll put in parentheses. What comes before this modifier?
. . .
painting (that held sway before Raffaello) by which the work of 15th century artists such as Sandro Botticelli was governedThat noun, "
painting," is not a logical target, and it's also part of another modifier. I'll put this one in parentheses too. What's before that?
. . .
the classical ideals (of painting) (that held sway before Raffaello) by which the work of 15th century artists such as Sandro Botticelli was governed.
That's it! Now, we have found our target noun! The phrases in parenthesis are vital noun modifiers, so they have every right to come between the target noun "
classical ideal" and the pronoun "
which."
Does all this make sense?
Take care, my friend!
Mike