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robu1
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GMAT 1: 620 Q48 V29
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Maine will face a serious shortage of timber by the year 2000, the res 02 Mar 2020, 01:00
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manhasnoname
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Maine will face a serious shortage of timber by the year 2000, the result of a major infestation of spruce budworm, that much of Maine's spruce and fir forests are coming to maturity, and a rapid expansion of the paper business.

(A) that much of Maine's spruce and fir forests are coming to maturity
(B) that coming to maturity of much of Maine's spruce and fir forests
(C) much of Maine's spruce and fir forests are coming to maturity
(D) Maine's spruce and fir forests, much of which is coming to maturity
(E) that maturity is coming to much of Maine's spruce and fir forests


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OA C

I found this on an old GMAT Prep test. I would really appreciate a thorough explanation. Why is it not B?


... the result of X, Y and Z. X, Y and Z should be paralllel, X and Z doesn't have "that" so Y shouldn't have "that". A B and E are gone.

Between C and D - C sounds better because "much of" is parallel to "major infestation of" and "rapid expansion of".
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we can not have a clause in the list as the others two are noun phrase.
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Maine will face a serious shortage of timber by the year 2000, the res 02 May 2021, 15:43
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The answer is definitely B. I had this in another source -- I copy/pasted it and lost the original, sorry -- and the original source said the answer was B, and that B said THE coming to maturity, not THAT coming to maturity.
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thepunygod
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Maine will face a serious shortage of timber by the year 2000, the res 02 May 2021, 19:27
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Can any one explain what is the correct usage with 'much'?
Isn't 'much' always singular?
Shouldn't the correct usage be much of....forests is.....?

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Maine will face a serious shortage of timber by the year 2000, the res 04 May 2021, 15:10
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A lot of the confusion here is due to the OP's typo ("that" instead of "the" REALLY changes the sentence) and the posting of the incorrect answer. The full sentence will be, when correct:

Maine will face a serious shortage of timber by the year 2000, the result of a major infestation of spruce budworm, the coming to maturity of much of Maine's spruce and fir forests and a rapid expansion of the paper business.

This sounds fine and works well with parallelism, which is what this question is really testing.

the result of
- a major infestation of spruce budworm
- the coming to maturity of much of Maine's spruce and fir forests and
- a rapid expansion of the paper business

As I'm sure many people using this forum know, the word "much" is used with uncountable things, such as water and sugar. So why can we say "much of the forests"?

It's idiomatic to say "forests" this way, though quite old fashioned. "The forests of Maine are huge and full of owls." But we're not talking about countable numbers of individual forests, like, "there are 117 forests." We're using "forests" to describe something vast and uncountable. It's quite similar to the way we sometimes say "the waters of the Pacific" even though water isn't a countable noun.

This is old-fashioned, almost poetic phrasing in an old fashioned question, which is why you won't find it in any official guide from the last 25 years or so! Unless you're being held captive by an evil gang and your only way out is to get every old SC question right for the next two years, I wouldn't worry about this one.

Also, given that there isn't an option with "many" in it, you can just relax and worry about something else to help you pick your answer. Rather than obsessively proving that your answer is perfect as a diamond, prove that it's the best option of the five, or rather, that it's the least awful one of the five.
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Maine will face a serious shortage of timber by the year 2000, the res 16 Oct 2023, 13:11
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