Modern critics are amused by early scholars’ categorizing Tacitus’s Ge

Critics are amused by the "act" of scholars' which seems to disdain them. They are not amused by the scholars' ( unless it's mentioned they are clowns!! )

So A seems allright to me.

B is wrong because of "as if"

C is wrong ..no meaning.

D is wrong.. they are not amused by scholars. They are amused by the act of scholars', which is to categorize X as Y.

E is wrong.... again same error as in D and also "if".

IMO A.

Modern critics are not amused by early scholars but they are amused by early scholar's categorizing..... hence C,D,E are out. Among A and B. A is the best.

OA is A
Agree all the other choices change the meaning
But I read a rule in one of the notes that
possessive+present participle is always wrong
thats the reason I picked D

I used the same reasoning. I don't understand what makes the exception here. Can somebody just explain rather than say changing the meaning? It changed the meaning from what to what?

Would someone please explain what meaning got changed in each answer choice?

I agree with the poster above, A

First of all, B and E are falling out because of "if". Remember that on GMAT when you have an "if" clause you must continue with "then"; and "then" does not show up anywhere.

C falls out because it creates ambiguity. The author intended to say that critics are amused with scholars who did something. Here it is hard to say who categorized Tacitus's Germania

A is correct because that not-underlined "by" means that you need passive voice. "who categorize" is not passive, so that should be it

My reasoning for A:

A) - weird.. uses possessives.. sounds odd.. but nothing explicitly wrong.. so hold on
B) - 'as if' is used for hypothetical situation.. Hence, changes the meaning
C) - 'categorizing' followed by comma - modifies the whole phrase - giving the impression that Modern critics categorized and not the scholars. That is not the intended meaning. Also, grammatically, 'of' following categorizing is not correct. For example: I wrote a book, listing all the chapters -- is correct but I wrote a book, listing of all the chapters -- doesn't make any sense.
D) - 'early scholar who categorize' -- problem1 -- gives the impression that critics are amused by scholars not the work. Problem2 -- gives the impression that scholars are still there and they usually categorize. The intended meaning is 'early scholar who categorizED'.
E) - same as D.

Hence A: best out of the worst.

I think both options are having different meanings.

A) scholars' categorizing Bach's Cello Suites as : Means critics are amused by scholars action.
D) scholars who categorize Bach's Cello Suites as : Means critics are amused by scholars. This choice distorts the original meaning.

Answer choice is A

"Of" would be used for "categorization OF Bach's Cello Suites".
But the way categorizing is used in the sentence, it's an action verb. Someone is "categorizing" (as a verb) Bach's Cello Suites as artistic masterpieces. Who? It's the scholars. Their "categorizing Bach's Cello Suites as artistic masterpieces" amused modern critics.
Their [something] amused modern critics.
And that [something] is their [categorizing Bach's Cello Suites as artistic masterpieces].
So since we are using action verb categorizING and not the noun of "categorization" - we do not use OF.

The key here is to focus on what the critics are amused by. They are not amused by scholars. Rather, they are amused by scholar's [something].
That [something] is a phrase. That phrase is not just limited to the portion underlined. In this case, it would be [categorizing Bach's Cello Suites as artistic masterpieces.]
So, modern critics are amused by scholars' [categorizing Bach's Cello Suites as artistic masterpieces.]
You can also say they are amused by scholars' categorization - however, the use of categorization is not one of the answer choices. Instead, you have to find another phrase that captures a noun phrase and the above example (A) does that.

Good analysis of D and E. However, "categorizing" is not modifying "scholars" in C - instead, "categorizing" is modifying the entire preceding clause "Modern critics are amused by early scholars".

-ing can be one of three things:
1. verb
2. noun
3. present participle modifier

To be a verb, -ing must have a "to be" in front of it (ex. I am typing). That doesn't happen here.
To be a noun, -ing has to be a subject or an object of something (i.e. it has to function as a noun). That also doesn't happen here.
So, "categorizing" is a present participle modifier.

Without a preceding comma, a present participle modifier gives us restrictive (necessary to identify) information about the preceding noun or noun phrase. For example:

"The girl playing the piano is excellent." Here "playing the piano" is giving us information about the girl - information that we need to know in order to identify which girl is excellent.


However, with a preceding comma, a present participle modifier gives us additional information about the entire preceding clause. For exmaple:

"The girl played the piano, striking each key with precision." Here "striking each key with precision" is modifying the entire preceding clause "the girl played the piano" - it is telling us that, while playing the piano, she is striking each key with precision. Notice, and this is the point of all of this, that we are not saying that the immediately preceding noun ("piano") is striking each key, rather we are saying that the subject of the preceding clause ("girl") is striking each key.


By the way, sometimes we see this:

"The girl played the piano, masterfully striking each key with precision." This is the same as before - the addition of "masterfully" doesn't change it because it is just modifying the modifier (telling us how she is striking each key with precision).


Back to the original sentence, C says:

"Modern critics are amused by early scholars, categorizing of Tacitus’s Germania as an ethnographic treatise."

"Categorizing" is modifying the immediately preceding clause "Modern critics are amused by early scholars", meaning that, in their being amused by the scholars, modern critics also categorize Tacitus’s Germania as an ethnographic treatise. Notice here that the present participle modifier preceded by a comma is modifying the subject of the immediately preceding clause ("modern critics"), not the immediately preceding noun ("scholars"). That's a big difference.

This still has a distorted meaning because we actually want the scholars to be the ones doing the categorizing. D and E correctly have the scholars doing the categorizing, but they are wrong because they have the critics being amused by the scholars (and which scholars? the ones who tend to categorize...) when instead we want the critics to be amused by the characterization itself.

I only make this point because present participle modifiers that are set off by commas are somewhat commonly tested on the GMAT, so we need to be really careful about what they modify.

Hi,

Although I understood the explanation given for A, I am not sure how would we know whether one should select A or D.

A looks very awkward while D looks very clear and concise.

Are we rejecting D only because Amused by cannot be followed by Scholar? Please confirm.

D is wrong because of the wrong tense of the verb "categorize". The sentence implies that early scholars categorize in the present.

Yes, options similar to A are generally found among the wrong answers in GMAT.

Is this really idiomatic? To me, it seems as if the word "of" is missing:


(A) scholars’ categorizing of Tacitus’s Germania as

Any clarification would be appreciated.

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