Many of the earliest known images of Hindu deities in India date from

Can images be fashioned? or the dieties were fashioned?

Shouldn't the correct parallelism be "spotted sandstone of Mathura or grey schist of Gandhara "
Kind of makes all the answer choices not parallel. What am I doing wrong?

I got this question correct. But a doubt arose post solving, which is as always -

GMATNinja and other experts - could you please help with this: when exactly can we shorten the second clause after the "OR" statement in an either/or construction for brevity or conciseness? Are there any specific rules regarding those? Can this be always done?

For example - "he either was studying or partying" - "was" has been dropped from the second clause after "OR" here.

It might not be possible to come up with exhaustive grammatical rules around this. As long as the meaning is unambiguous, we can omit certain constructs.

For example, following is correct:

Rahul plans to go to Delhi and Bengaluru.

So, we don't need to say:

Rahul plans to go to Delhi and to Bengaluru.

On the other hand, we would repeat the to in the following sentence:

Rahul plans to go to Delhi for the sole purpose of shopping and to Bengaluru for his first visit to MG Road.


Incidentally, this is an incorrect sentence. This should be:

He was either studying or partying.

@e-gmat

how can we apply the rule of comma+ed verbal (fashioned).

please elaborate.

himanshu0123

A "comma + -ed" construction typically creates a noun modifier, and that's the case here with ", fashioned." These modifiers usually apply to the preceding noun or noun phrase. In this case, that's "Empire," so we have to cut all the choices that do this. While we have some flexibility to skip over intervening modifiers to create a clear meaning, a noun modifier will never "leap" all the way back across a clause like this one to modify the subject ("images").

Thanks DmitryFarber

Always a pleasure to read your responses

Just to clear my confusion on COMMA+ED verbal acting as a verb modifier, modifying the subject of the preceding clause. Please give your opinion on the same.
I came across a post from Ron where he said such things.

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... 33-30.html

(see 6th post from bottom on above link)

himanshu0123

Yes, a "comma + -ed" modifier can be adverbial. But note that if it's adverbial (a modifier that applies to anything but a noun), then it doesn't make sense to say that it modifies the subject, which is by definition a noun. In Ron's example, ("Tanya collapsed onto the couch, exhausted from a 14-hour work shift."), the "exhausted" part modifies the previous clause, showing why/under what conditions Tanya collapsed. Of course, Tanya is the one who is exhausted, but it's not accurate to say that the modifier applies to Tanya, so I'd say Ron's slightly off on the terminology there. Similarly, if I say "Expecting a promotion, Brad was shocked to be laid off," we know that it's Brad who was expecting a promotion. In fact, if we start the sentence with anyone but the person who was expecting a promotion, we'll have an error. But the modifier is still adverbial and applies to the following action, not the noun. If the sentence said "Expecting a promotion, Brad's dismissal came as a shock," we could quickly eliminate it, since the subject is "dismissal." But we could also see that the issue goes beyond the subject. After all, the subject is what performs the action. So Brad's dismissal came as a shock. Why/how? Because it was expecting a promotion? This makes no sense.

Now, back to the Kushan Empire. Why can't "fashioned" serve as an adverbial modifier?

First, its position makes that entirely unclear. In the Tanya sentence, the only other possibility is that "exhausted" modifies "couch," and it's pretty clear that's not intended. The sentence is short and direct, and the modifier comes directly after the action. In this problem, by contrast, the subject is followed by two modifiers, a verb, and object, and another modifier. That's a lot more material to get confused over!

Second, if "fashioned" were an adverbial modifier, then like "exhausted," it would need to show how/why/under what circumstances something happened. However, the information about what the images were fashioned from in no way explains or adds detail to the idea that they date from the time of the Kushan Empire. Those are two different assertions, and that's why the correct answer expresses them in two separate clauses.

I also thought that E is correct because of either or construction but I chose A because IMO fashioned worked as modifier modifying Hindu deities so I thought choice E will lead to meaning error. Can someone please clarify this.
Thanks

Such past participial phrases ("fashioned...") towards the end of a clause generally modify the noun/noun-phrase immediately before the participial phrase. Hence, "Hindu deities" is not really ideally positioned, to be modified by this past participial phrase.

By the way, the intent is that this past participial phrase should modify "images" (not "Hindu deities").

Also, not sure how you thought E leads to meaning error..the parallelism in E is:

images....date...and were fashioned..

Hello BansalT,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, the meaning error in Option A is actually that it incorrectly modifies "the Kushan empire" with "fashioned either...grey schist", illogically implying that the Kushan empire was fashioned either from the spotted sandstone of Mathura or from Gandharan grey schist; the intended meaning is that many of the earliest known images of Hindu deities in India were fashioned either from the spotted sandstone of Mathura or from Gandharan grey schist; please remember, in a “noun + comma + phrase” construction, the phrase must correctly modify the noun.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

An __ED participle can potentially play either of these roles. It can introduce a modifier, or it can be paired with is/are/was/were/etc. to form a verb in passive voice.


The modifier construction doesn't work here, though.

• It can't modify the preceding noun (a function whose correct use is illustrated by this official problem), because the preceding noun is "the Kushan Empire", which isn't the thing that was made (= "fashioned") out of two kinds of rock.

• Nor can it modify the preceding clause, because the preceding clause is about the AGE of the stone images—which has nothing to do with the types of rock used to make them.

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