New items developed for automobiles in the 1997 model year included a

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended meaning of the crucial part of this sentence is that there was a possibility that a burst of smoke would appear when the airbag inflated and make a passenger think the car was on fire.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Pronouns + Idioms + Parallelism + Grammatical Construction

• "would + base form of verb ("make" in this sentence)" is a correct, idiomatic construction for referring to a hypothetical future action.
• If a list contains only two elements, they must be joined by a conjunction.
• Parallelism should only be maintained between elements that play the same role in the sentence.
• The infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + make" in this sentence) is the preferred construction for referring to the purpose/intent of an action.

A: This answer choice incorrectly uses the unidiomatic construction "would + present participle ("verb+ing" - "making" in this sentence)" to refer to a hypothetical future action; remember, "would + base form of verb ("make" in this sentence)" is a correct, idiomatic construction for referring to a hypothetical future action. Further, Option A incorrectly uses the "comma + conjunction ("and" in this sentence) to separate two elements in a list - "would appear" and "(would) making"; remember, if a list contains only two elements, they must be joined by a conjunction.

B: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "so that it could make"; the construction of this phrase illogically implies that there was a possibility that a burst of smoke would appear when the airbag inflated, for the purpose of being able to make a passenger think the car was on fire; the intended meaning is that there was a possibility that a burst of smoke would appear when the airbag inflated and, as a separate action, would, practically, make a passenger think the car was on fire. Further, Option B suffers from pronoun ambiguity, as it is unclear whether "it" refers to "whisp of smoke" or "bag".

C: This answer choice incorrectly maintains parallelism between "inflated" and "made", illogically implying that there was a possibility that a burst of smoke would appear when the airbag both inflated and made a passenger think the car was on fire; the intended meaning is that there was a possibility that a burst of smoke would appear when the airbag inflated, and then, the whisp of smoke would make a passenger think the car was on fire; remember, parallelism should only be maintained between elements that play the same role in the sentence; here, the two verbs are meant to act on different nouns.

D: Correct. This answer choice correctly maintains parallelism between "would appear" and "(would) make"; in doing so, Option A correctly uses the idiomatic construction "would + base form of verb ("make" in this sentence)" to refer to a hypothetical future action and conveys the intended meaning - that there was a possibility that a burst of smoke would appear when the airbag inflated, and then, the whisp of smoke would, as a separate action, make a passenger think the car was on fire. Further, Option D avoids the pronoun error seen in Option B, as it uses no pronouns. Additionally, Option D correctly uses conjunction ("and" in this sentence) to link two elements in a list.

E: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "to make"; the use of the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + make" in this sentence) illogically implies that there was a possibility that a burst of smoke would appear when the airbag inflated, for the purpose of making a passenger think the car was on fire; the intended meaning is that there was a possibility that a burst of smoke would appear when the airbag inflated and, as a separate action, make a passenger think the car was on fire; remember, the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + make" in this sentence) is the preferred construction for referring to the purpose/intent of an action.

Hence, D is the best answer choice.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

I believe that the answer is D. parallelism i think.

eliminated the possibility that a burst of smoke eliminated the possibility
that a burst of smoke would appear when the bag inflated, and make an
already terrified passenger think the car was on fire.

First of all, we need to focus on the question's meaning.
What made terrified passengers think the car was on fire? The burst of smoke or the bag. It cannot the bag, only the burst of smoke makes sense.

Second, we use a parallel structure [X would appear ....and make Y do something.....] or an intention structure [X would appear to make Y do something...]

C and D are debatable choices. Now, we will look at them closely.
If we use parallel structure like D:
" .........a safer air bag, which eliminated the possibility that a burst of smoke would appear.......and make.........." ==> "appear" and "make" are parallel. Does it make sense? Nope, it's like the smoke appeared and then it made something else to terrify a passenger. The intended meaning is that the appearance of the smoke itself made passengers terrified.
Similar example: A ghost appeared and made us terrified. the sentence does not covey the intention of a ghost's appearance.

To convey the intention, we should use the idiom "X would appear to make Y do something"

Hence, E is correct

With E, the sentence would be:

..that a burst of smoke would appear when the bag Inflated to make an already terrified passenger think the car was on fire.

The use of intention (to make) is not justified here, because the bag is not inflating because it wants to make an already terrified passenger think the car was on fire. In other words, it is not the intention of the bag to make an already terrified passenger think the car was on fire.

So, E cannot be correct. D is appropriate.

When I saw how low the % correct on this one was, i thougth for sure I'd get it wrong, but E. is the only one that makes sense.

First, any choice with "and" in it should be eliminated because it implies that the release of smoke by the airbag and the passenger thinking the car is on fire are two independent events, when in fact they are dependent.

That leaves B. and E.

B. Inflated, so that it could make.

E. Inflated to make.

B. is wrong for a few reasons, but the main one that I honed in on is because of the redundancy... "To reduce the possibility... that it could make" is redundant. It should be either "To reduce the possibility... to make" or "to reduce... that it could make"

Also, i've just never heard the idiom "so that it could make" before in a causational way.

E. is all that's left.

EducationAisle, you are incorrect with how you're interpretting the phrase "to make"... it does not imply nor require intent, only causation.

Actually, there are examples on OG of this nature:

In a plan to stop the erosion of East Coast beaches, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed building parallel to shore a breakwater of rocks that would rise six feet above the waterline and act as a buffer, absorbing the energy of crashing waves and protecting the beaches.

In the above sentence, breakwater of rocks do not do following two independent things:

1. rise six feet above the waterline
2. act as a buffer

The fact that breakwater of rocks rise six feet above the waterline is the reason why they act as a buffer.

It's the "when the bag inflated" aspect of the original sentence that requires the final part as a dependent, conditional aspect - this question has no such "conditional" aspect to it.

If we were to add the same type of modifier to that sentence:

In a plan to stop the erosion of East Coast beaches, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed building parallel to shore a breakwater of rocks that would rise six feet above the waterline when the builders finished and act as a buffer, absorbing the energy of crashing waves and protecting the beaches.

The builders don't act as a buffer, the wall does.

By the way, hope you realize that inflation of bag did not terrify the passenger; the burst of smoke did. In choice D, the structural parallelism between would appear and (would) make helps establish this relationship.


This doesn't change anything. This doesn't say that builders act as a buffer. The structural parallelism (at least at the first level) still stays between would rise and (would) act.

Nevertheless, we are deviating from the point that you had originally brought up: Presence of and indicates two independent events. As this OG question suggests, this is not necessarily true.

I see your point, but I still think you're misapplying the logic of the OG. While those things could be dependent, in the phrasing of the OG they're independent... the wall would act as a buffer whether it would be six feet, eight feet, or even teen feet above the waterline. While they're correlated, the second part does not necessarily depend on the exact circumstances of the first - there could be other preceding circumstances in which it would still hold true.

In this case, however, we're only trying to eliminate the possibility that a burst of smoke makes an already terrified passenger think the car was on fire if that burst of smoke is caused solely by the inflation of the bag.


What we DON'T want is to eliminate the possibility of a terrified passenger thinking the car is on fire if the car is actually on fire.

When you use the "and" in there, a good test to see if it fits is to switch around the order and see if the meaning has changed. This phrase's meaning is changed completely:

"eliminated the possibility that a burst of smoke would make an already terrified passenger think the car was on fire and appear when the bag inflated"

Again, what we DON'T want is to eliminate the possibility of a terrified passenger thinking the car is on fire if the car is actually on fire. In this version of the sentence this is entirely possible.

Whereas in the OG example you posted, while the grammar and syntax isn't as pretty, the sentence's meaning remains unchanged:

In a plan to stop the erosion of East Coast beaches, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed building parallel to shore a breakwater of rocks that would act as a buffer, absorbing the energy of crashing waves and protecting the beaches, and rise six feet above the waterline.

Does that make sense?

Thanks.


If OG really thought (or wanted to convey) that these are independent, the phrasing would have been something along these lines:

a breakwater of rocks that would rise six feet above the waterline and that would act as a buffer...



The actual height does not matter; in fact even without the height the sentence would have been ok:

a breakwater of rocks that would rise above the waterline and act as a buffer...

As I had mentioned earlier, the structural parallelism is between would rise and (would) act; six feet is not a part of this parallelism.


This is outside the scope of the sentence (what we want the passenger to think if the car is actually on fire.

exactly, it's outside the scope, which is why you can't use "and" to bring it in...

You seem to agree with me without agreeing with me and it's very confusing You seem to be dead-set on parallelism while I'm talking about meaning. Try rereading my last few posts and instead of looking at independent/dependent as sentence structure issues, look at independent/dependent as sentence meaning issues... I should have made that more clear, my apologies.

I know it is easy to loose track of the actual issue under discussion, when the thread gets long. But this is all good discussion.

I believe you had initially discarded all choices that used an and, because presence of and denotes independent events. Most of my posts above were aimed at letting you know that this is not necessarily true.

If I get some time, I will see if I can find out more such examples from OG, though it is a very tedious exercise (but not worthless).

As for the infinitive usage, came across this sentence in OG:

The use of lie detectors is based on the assumption that lying produces emotional reactions in an individual to create, in turn, physiological responses that are unconscious.

OE says: the infinitive construction implies intent, which does not really make sense.

While one may argue that infinitive also implies pure causation, at the very least, there is an ambiguity of interpretation in E.

D is the best of what we have.

It implies intent here because of its context (involuntary reaction is the exact opposite of intent...) within the overall meaning in the sentence and how it is placed / what it modifies, not because infinitives imply intent as a rule.

In otherwords, if you change the cause of the physiological reactions from emotional reactions (unintended) to the individual then you are implying that the individual intends to do it... not because infinitives imply intent but because you're changing the causation away from something that is unintended to something that has a choice.

Anyone know the source of the original question? We know that OA is E... we just need to find out if it's from a reputable source.

Just to clarify; the OG sentence (The use of lie detectors is ..) and the corresponding OE in my last post were for an incorrect option. So, despite that fact that emotional reactions are unintended, OG still considers the infinitive usage wrong here (since the usage of infinitive may still attach/imply intent). The correct answer by the way, is:

The use of lie detectors is based on the assumption that lying produces emotional reactions in an individual that, in turn, create unconscious physiological responses.


Well, let's remove the "O" from the "OA" for now and just call it "A", until it is established that this question is indeed "O"fficial: ).

THIS IS A GMATPREP QUESTION AND OA IS D.

New items developed for automobiles in the 1997 model year included a safer air bag , which, unlike previous air bags, eliminated the possibility
that a burst of smoke would appear when the bag inflated, and making an already terrified passenger think the car was on fire.

would appear and would make ( would understood) need to be parallel and this is happening in choice D only

A. inflated, and making - not parallel to appear
B. inflated, so that it could make. - not parallel
C. inflated and made - wrong tense use d, not parallel
D. inflated and make. - make is parallel to appear
E. inflated to make - to is used to give intention, which makes no sense here.

I am afraid that to think that the bag when inflated is terrifying the passenger is erroneous. It is the burst of smoke that terrifies the passenger that leads him to think that the car is on fire. The new safer bag eliminates the possibility of the burst of the smoke only. It does not eliminate the possibility of the bag being inflated. The very action of an air bag is to inflate and thereby create a barrier between the person and the object in front when a collision occurs. If the inflation of the bag itself is eliminated, how could it then be a safety bag, or how can we conclude that it is a safer bag. Therefore there is no causal relationship between inflation and additional fear. It is the smoke that is the cause. Inflated to make is wrong

The choice must also be read with the expression ‘eliminated the possibility’ which implies that the safer bag meant to eliminate a negative aspect, which is the burst of smoke causing the additional fright.

Great question!

The new airbag eliminated the possibility that a burst of smoke 'would appear' and 'would make' .......

'C' is wrong because usage of 'made' is wrong.

'E' is wrong because inflated bag intentionally didn't do anything . 'to' implies the intention