avohden wrote:
Midway through the parade, the rodeo queen from New Mexico appeared — a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally.
A. appeared — a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally
B. appeared — a red sash across her chest and a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse and waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally
C. appeared — a red sash across her chest; a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse and was waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally
D. appeared with a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat, she rode in circles on her gray horse, and was waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally
E. appeared with a red sash across her chest and a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat, rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally
I'm happy to help.
This is a hard question.
The phrases "
a red sash across her chest" and "
a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat" are absolute phrases.
These are separated by commas, do not take conjunctions, and cannot be in parallel to anything other than another absolute phrase.
(B) is incorrect, because it puts a conjunction between two absolute phrases
(C) is incorrect, because it separates absolute phrases with semicolons
(D) is a run-on sentence
(E) is also a run-on --- the two verbs in parallel, "
appeared" and "
rode" must be joined by a conjunction.
Choice
(A) has no flaws and is the best answer. The semicolon divides her appearance from her action. The sentence has a very nice flow.
It's funny --- the only error I saw in
(A) wasn't the subject of a split at all.
"....
waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally."
It's not clear to me that the pronoun "
them" has a clear antecedent. This is the type of mistake that the real GMAT often employs in incorrect answer choices ---- using a singular collective noun, here "
crowd", and then a plural pronoun referring to its members. That's illegal.
A possible correct phrasing would be ....
" ...
waving at the crowd as if she knew each person personally."
Does all this make sense?
Mike
Thanks for this explanation. I read the article on absolute phrases and have a doubt in reference to this question.
As I understand, an absolute phrase can modify the preceding clause. But in this sentence, the phrase "a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat" seems to be modifying "a red sash across her chest". Presence of "and" between these phrases would make both these modifiers separaetly modify the preceding clause which looks logical to me. Can you explain how is my understanding flawed?